Fattening the curve, one delicious baked good after another

Something has gone horribly wrong with my freshly baked loaf of bread.

Instead of being a thing of bulbous beauty with a smooth top of crispy crust, it looks like a giant, slightly misshapen brown hockey puck, with roughly the same density. And there are weird crevices on the top.

One sibling, always the comedian, sent this response to the pic I posted in our brothers’ group chat: “The Rob Ford of loaves: didn’t rise to the occasion and all cracked up.” Ouch.

But I can’t argue with his assessment.

Like a lot of people, I’ve been baking my butt off during the pandemic. In addition to filling some of the countless hours stuck at home, there is something oddly reassuring about making something so self-sustaining in these uncertain times. Actually, I’ve been baking my butt on. With all the (mostly) delicious baked goods flying out of our oven — my kids have been cranking out cakes, cookies, cupcakes, muffins and the occasional pie — we have been fattening the curve as well as flattening it. Whatever. I’ll take comfort where I can get it these days.

After more or less mastering my no-knead bread recipe — flour, packaged yeast, water, salt and sugar baked in a castiron Dutch oven — I decided to try my hand at using a “starter,” which entails creating your own, naturally occurring yeast.

Like most things bread-related, it sounds so simple: mix flour and water together over the course of several days and wait for the yeast and bacteria to get their groove on. It’s fun to see the sorcery as bubbles start to form and the whole thing takes on a tremendously funky, though not unpleasant odour.

According to the bread snobs, starter is the only way to get true sourdough with the distinctive tang and chewy texture that separates so-called artisan bread from its more pedestrian cousins. And because you can maintain it by just adding more flour and water — called feeding — it can be used in perpetuity: there are plenty of folks who’ve had their starter for years and years.

But like most living things, starter can be finicky and temperamental. My previous attempts have resulted in some truly foul-smelling concoctions. I usually give up and go back to packaged yeast.

This time around, I vowed to stick with it. Like most cooking, bread-making is all about trial and error. Most of my tried and true dishes start as recipes and then evolve as I learn better techniques and the nuances of flavour. Failure in the kitchen — as in life — is the fastest way to progress.

And this particular failure still tasted delicious. I’m pretty sure the dough had too much water in it and therefore didn’t rise, leaving me with a flat, dense bread. But it had that amazing sourdough tang and lots of little bubbles — an indication there was plenty of yeasty goodness in my starter.

So I’ll keep feeding it and try again. My goal is to go from the Rob Ford of breads to a Doug: perhaps not the very best but surprisingly competent during a pandemic.