Epic Bread FAIL!

I hate bread.  I love bread, but I hate bread.

A few weeks ago, I was in Barnes and Noble habitually nuzzling the Asian soup cookbooks when - suddenly and completely unexpectedly - i picked up and bought a new cookbook, Tartine Bread.  To be honest, the book had been staring at me from the corner of the shelf; peeping around a few @FoodNetwork star cookbooks, and jostling @MarthaStewart annuals for position.  It made frequent eye contact with me, and even subtly flashed the cover loaf at me, which prompted me to immediately drop the Asian book (sorry...) and slither over.

// next morning

I had taken the cookbook home.  Heavy sigh.... I had spent a long night closely studying it's pages.  A true work of art!!!  Pure Bread beauty...

This is how my relationship with Bread was to begin again... on a slip; a whim; what I thought would be a book on my one night stand.

//

And so, I began with the first recipe in the book.  The Starter.  A simple mixture of flour and water using my hands.  This transfers the bacteria from my hand to the flour/water mixture.  In most cases, giving someone a bacteria is not the goal, but with Bread it's a requirement!!

I set the mixture on the back counter and covered it with a paper towel.  And I waited.  I waited for 4 days.  The book had described that the starter will begin to bubble, but that it would not be ready for it's first feeding until after the 2nd or 3rd day.  Tell tale signs of a hungry starter are the bubbly, crusty surface that forms on the starter.  Other sure fire signs are noticeable by pulling the crust back on the starter and smelling it.  It should smell of a strong cheese and, if you dare, taste a bit acidic.

My starter?  She was beautiful.  Divine. Hungry and beautiful... and, so I fed her.

I tossed out 80% of the starter into my compost bin, which was promptly sent to the large garbage can in the back as to avoid further funk-ification of my kitchen.  I added back lukewarm water and more flour, which was mixed with my hands.  This feeding process is training the wild bacteria to be strong and to consume the flour nutrients in a timely manner.

The next morning, the Starter was looking healthy.  She smelled strong, which according to the cook book was how the bacteria are trained.  After feeding she should smell milky and mild.  Before feeding, she should smell strong and acidic.  Oh boy was she acidic the second day...

And, in my morning routine haste, I added water which was above the "lukewarm" requirement.  After I did it, I thought to myself "oh god, I may have just burned her."  Well, there was nothing I could do but hope that in the afternoon she would regain her footing and maintain growth.

I was fooling myself.  She was gone and I killed her.  The kitchen was awful, like a gruesome event had occurred, 10 hours later when I returned.  The emotion laid heavy on me.  I threw out the Starter and the dish, petri and all.

Cry, Forever.
Bread: 1; Supermophed: 0

Happy Valentine's Day, Bread Porno.