Feel so nervous - like it's a first date or something!
I have been baking for a few years now. For the last 18 months I've made all our breads and before that, on and off with about 30% of our bread needs for a few years before that, but... I've never done a sourdough. I have tons of baking books. I've read about starters here and in books and have settled on doing the Pineapple juice starter, but I'm so scared to get started? WHY?
It's like it's a first date or something - something I need to commit to! We are just back from a month long vacation to Croatia (where my husband is from) and with the kitchen still being warm due to summer, but not too warm, nows the time to start, but why the fear?
Fear it won't grow? Fear it will double out of control? (I laughed at the Mamoth bake thread as that is SOOOOO something I would do. Wait - HAVE done when someone gave me the Amish Friendship bread starter and I just kept feeding it and not using it. In the end I made like 12 loaves of bread - using ALL the starter to just get rid of it. I couldn't kill it as that would be killing a living thing - something I was supposed to keep alive as a promise. Oy vey!)
Anyway, I'm so nervous about sourdoughs and I don't know why! Can I be the only one? Seems not! but I don't understand the jitters!
It is a whole new world I hear mine yelling to be fed now and feel compelled to stop reading and go give them attention, so honey, I get it! The sarters are alive and depend on you for survival!
One of my colleagues took some of my starter I began years and years, now I get to see picutes of her loaves! It is like looking at pics of grandkids!
It is lvely to FINALLY have a colleague who understands!
I empathise deeply. It's like a fight or flight response. I do this more and more often. My belief is that things I used to find challenging are now routine and my mind seems to choose odd things to make a big deal over. I just like to accept it as excitement instead of nervousness and then get on with the adventure! Math can almost put me into drooling stupor so I occasionally reel before the daunting aspect of Baker's Percentagages, but I keep coming back for more. LOL maybe after an aspirin and a nap.
Ya gotta love a challenge, and you're gonna love sourdough.
All the best to you and...Bake on!
Dosi
discovered one of the few natural things that can cause failure. Fear. Fear can be so powerful sometimes, it keeps folks from taking the first steps, even baby ones, to do or try something new, solve a problem or fix something. It's hard to bake SD bread if you can't get that first step out of the way; the flour fermenting with water to make the SD starter to begin with. I love dosidough's idea that the beginning is like taking the first steps on a great and exciting adventure - nothing to be fearful of - if it's not going to kil, you of course :-)
Have no fear, seek the great adventure and happily bake on - with sourdough. The world is your oyster!
What a nice post that points out what so many of us go through everyday in life.