Adventures in baking

Jared has a new hobby these days. A month or two ago, he bought a sourdough mix for our bread machine. It was really tasty, but pretty expensive, too. So Jared started researching making his own sourdough. We found a place that carries sourdough starter and Jared got going on it immediately. It took about a month, but his starter is now nice and smelly and he is turning out some pretty good sourdough bread on a regular basis.

It's been interesting observing Jared's dedication to the perfection of this bread. The starter is not easy to maintain; you have to add flour and take out a certain amount of starter periodically and it has to be stored at certain temperatures. I've found the starter in all sorts of weird places -- under a lamp in the living room, on the porch outside on a warm day -- whatever it takes to keep it properly fermenting.

I am not good at iterative processes. I want to do something and have it turn out well the first time and if there is some incremental improvement after that, I'm happy about that, too. But I don't want to take tiny baby steps toward the finished product. Jared is much more dedicated to the refinement of things, which I think is part of why he's good with his hands. He is willing to work through setbacks to get things right, when I would be throwing my hands up and deciding I just wasn't cut out for something. I guess I have things to learn from him.