Bread Winners

Solid proof.

After writing about baking last week, I felt like it was time to introduce you to my new friend.

His name is Frank.

Well, that’s not him. He lives inside there. In my fridge.

He’s my sourdough starter!

I feed him once a week and in return he gives me the most amazing gifts. It’s a pretty great relationship.

I grew up eating Wonder bread. That was our toast in the morning. That was the vehicle for my daily peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my brown paper bag. That was the bread served with dinner. Do you remember that? At dinner every night, along with the meat, potatoes, and canned vegetable on the plate, bread and butter was served. Occasionally, Mom would mix things up and buy some English muffins, ready-to-bake breadsticks, or dinner rolls, but white bread was the staple.

When my dad needed to control his cholesterol, we switched to whole wheat bread. No one seemed very excited about it. I think that was when his bread with dinner routine disappeared. If whole wheat was the option, he opted out.

Dad taught me strict rules about bread. Always toast it when making a sandwich. A submarine, a BLT, the bun for your burger or sloppy Joes, doesn’t matter. Toast it. Rye bread is dedicated to pastrami, Reubens, and patty melts. Breakfast sandwiches should always be on biscuits.

I learned about pumpernickel bread when Mom would make appetizers for New Year’s Eve. Spinach dip from a Knorr’s mix in a hollowed out pumpernickel bread bowl looked pretty cool on the buffet table. I remember when she made Hanky Panky for the first time. I accompanied her to the grocery store to shop for ingredients for this new hors d’oeuvre she wanted to make. When I saw the cocktail slices of pumpernickel, I thought they were the cutest things I’d ever seen.

Whenever Mom made chili, she’d make cornbread muffins. Years later, G and I would drive his yellow Corvette on country roads in Michigan. Once, we stumbled onto the Jiffy factory, the maker of all those boxes of cornbread that filled Mom’s cupboard. It was a like a homecoming.

When Mom made spaghetti or her ravioli casserole, garlic bread was a must. She bought those bags of garlic bread and kept them in the freezer. On pasta night, she’d put a bag in the oven for ten minutes and we’d have salty, buttery, garlic bread to dip in our red sauce.

In my twenties, I bought garlic bread in a bag. I put it in the oven and within a few minutes it was on fire. Cheryl came into the kitchen to save the day and said, “Um, you take this one OUT of the bag when you bake it, Dummy.”

When I lived on Long Island for my college internship, the office had bagels every Friday. New York bagels. I’ve been a bagel snob ever since.

One of my favorite restaurants in Cleveland was Aladdin’s where I dipped warm, pillowy pita bread into creamy hummus topped with parsley, olives, and smoked paprika.

One of my shining moments: me and my baguette in Paris!

When G and I lived in Michigan we were lucky to feast on artisan bread at Zingerman’s Bakehouse and Avalon Bread. Of course, we were spoiled in San Francisco, the world capital of sourdough bread. When we briefly lived in Fort Lauderdale, we found Zak the Baker in Miami.

When we settled in Naples, I decided to get serious about my bread making skills.

In culinary school, I had a baking class that encompassed quick breads, yeasted bread, cookies, muffins, scones, puff pastry. I felt like I had to learn more about how to perfect yeasted breads.

I have a handful of cookbooks about bread so I started studying those. Still hungry, I borrowed as many bread cookbooks I could find at the library.

After collecting all the knowledge, I went to the grocery store to stock up on different types of flour. My friend Cheryl’s generosity struck again. For my birthday, she sent me a box from King Arthur Baking. It contained bread flour, yeast, bread baking stoneware, and the aforementioned home for my sourdough starter, Frank.

(Frank is short for Frankenstein. I chose this name so that whenever I opened up the jar to feed him, I could do this and make G laugh. It’s what I live for: )

It’s taken a lot of practice, but this year I’ve baked some of the best loaves yet.

I feed Frank every Saturday morning. All it takes is some flour and water and he’s a happy camper. So he doesn’t get too big and outgrow his home, I take out some of the starter that the bakers call the discard. The bonus is that I can use the discard to bake things as well. I’ve used the discard to make pizza dough, waffles, and biscuits so far.

I tend to use Frank for rustic round and pan loaves of sourdough (G’s fave) and pizza dough.

My next goal is to make rolls of sourdough and ciabatta. I’d love to have those on hand for my favorite sandwiches like Ina’s chicken Caesar club or sausage with broccoli rabe and provolone.

For now, I’ll just bask in the glow of my ability to bake a decent loaf of sourdough bread.

Thanks again for reading! I care about you. Please don’t forget to eat your greens.

***Written to Ceramic Animal’s Sweet Unknown.