Making the bread
Do I love bread?
Does a bear shit in the woods? Is the Pope Catholic? Has Aldi run out of toilet roll?
The answer to all these, is a big, fat, yeasty YES. I love bread. And my favorite by far has to be Sourdough, handsdown.
So imagine my utter thrill when I was asked if I would like to review an at home course in making your own sourdough loaf while being in Coronavirus lockdown?!
Basically, the BBC has launched a new channel called Learning with Experts; an initiative to:
Learn Together. Stay at Home.
There's chocolate making, flower arranging, upcycling furniture and photography courses among many, many more. But all I care about is bread. All I ever care about is bread.
Through the channel I entered my details, and committed to the Sourdough at home package taught by Barney Desmazery. Barney is what I’ve been needing in my life, Barney is what’s been missing. Barney knows bread, and also knows that people like me just want simple, straightforward, easy to make loaves so I can concentrate on eating the hell out of it once baked.
It’s all very straight forward, you sign up, pay the fee (£109), then you’re allowed into the virtual classroom to begin your first lesson, a video called Making and maintaining your starter.
The course is made up of four videos, each one an advance of the next, and you can’t get to one without completing the last, kinda like Mario Kart, you’ve got to succeed to progress; a structure that kept me committed throughout.
It started off well, I made my starter and named him Sammy (Barney said a starter is like having a new pet in the house and you must treat it as such, to which I fully committed), and fed him every day. But Sammy was not strong, (maybe the runt of the litter?) because Sammy never became active… I’d failed my first assignment, and failed Sammy.
But, the nice thing about this online course is that you’re in it with a few other people, and there’s a message board where you can ask the teacher and other students for advice… so i virtually stuck my hand up, asked where I had gone wrong and Barney and a classmate called Helen quickly responded, so I was back on track to successfully reviving Sammy, completing my assignment and was able to move on to lesson two; Basic sourdough loaf.
The lessons are pretty easy to follow, but Barney knows a lot about bread, and at times I had to rewind to fully understand what he was saying. He kinda explains everything in layman terms, but like, a layman that’s baked a bit before. However, once you’ve unlocked a video, they stay available to you forever, so you can go back and watch them as many times as you need. Plus there are downloadable “Lesson Notes” that you can print out and refer back to so there’s really no excuse to fail this course.
Once I’d got through to the final stages of baking my first loaf, I was so determined to eat some god-damn sourdough that I prepped my boyfriend to go out and buy a loaf if mine didn’t turn out right… but low and behold, not only did it come out perfectly, but it tasted like some of the best bread I’ve ever had the pleasure to eat (even if I do say so myself!). Seems like this Barney guy knows what he’s talking about.
One thing I got fully involved with was the sharing of assignments and photos, you’re encouraged by Barney to share photos and videos of your work-in-progress with the class, and others can comment back meaning you feel determined to complete and improve on each assignment, no matter what problems you come up against.
It seems the world and it’s mother have been making sourdough during lockdown, and I can see why; it’s a long process that involves a lot of specific steps that you must follow down to the last kg, meaning while it may not be ideal for normal day to day life, it is a great process to learn while you have lots of time on your hands, looks super impressive on your instagram feed, and tastes delicious.