Bread is Coming!

Life has been crazy and I haven’t been updating my site. And then 2020 arrived and life has been even more insane for everyone.

Like everyone else, I’m social distancing (honestly, this is fairly normal for an introvert like myself just with the addition of more working from home). Since bread has been harder to find at the store, I’ve been baking my own. Today my husband asked if I was making my Roman “poop” bread. I’m not because it’s a sourdough and I don’t have any starter going. But, that reminded me that I don’t have my bread information online yet so I’ll start with this recipe!

The inspiration from this bread came from Pliny the Elder and some archaeological findings at Bearsden in the latrine of a Roman fort (the reason why my husband calls this my Roman poop bread).

So, to get this kicked off I am getting a sourdough starter going. I use the King Arthur Flour Sourdough Starter recipe for guidance, but it’s just flour and water you ferment for a few days and feed it with more flour as you go along. Basically you are cultivating your own yeast and the fermented product gives sourdough bread its unique flavor. Sourdoughs themselves can taste differently depending on a variety of factors. There is a really neat podcast Gastropod: Secrets of Sourdough on some experiments done with several bakers all making sourdough starters with the same ingredients and getting different results. It’s really fascinating so if you are interesting in the science behind sourdough I recommend a listen.

I’ll post more about my Roman bread as I go along this week so stay tuned!