My DIL brought over a couple of slices of fresh sourdough this afternoon. She calls her starter Sammy.
I do that alarm is so loud, But I have a method first thing I do is open the door and the window, Then I fan the smoke Out the door with a pizza box.
Growing up, we had store-bought bread for things like sandwiches and toast, but mom would make bread at least every weekend and probably more often than that, best eaten within an hour or at least that same day. I love homemade bread, but slicing it can be tricky. Is there anyone here who has never eaten homemade bread? Is there anyone who has never made their own bread?
An electric knife works great on homemade bread! It doesn't squish the bread. My husband is always standing by to slice him some hot bread as soon as I get the bread out of the oven.
I mentioned this a while ago... My mother would sometimes buy bread from the local bakery. The woman who worked the counter wore no hair net and always had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth ("The good old days.") The loaves were unsliced, and they had a machine to slice the bread upon request. I can still see that woman hanging over the machine with our loaf of bread and a 2" long ash just threatening to fall off the end of her cigarette. It never did, as I recall.
Homemade bread became a treat after we moved away from our grandparents. That's all my grandma made was homemade breads, rolls and biscuits among other baked goods.
I think it's magic what a little yeast can turn flour into. I met a woman who made bread all day every day for church fundraisers and for her regular customers. She never bought commercial yeast...she captured it out of the air. That is magic.
The original sourdough. I have read about bakers in "the old days" who had no idea why bread raised. They knew if they did certain things, the bread would leaven, but they didn't know why. Often they would get the foam or the dregs from the brewers to add to their dough.