This is a little diversion from quilting but most quilters also love to cook.
Like so many of us during this pandemic, I have pretty much been hunkering down and staying home. One of the things I have been doing is baking sourdough bread. I have talked before about my 50 year old sourdough starter that I began while living in India. I have been keeping it alive all these years and recently have been doing more and more experimenting.
Last year a friend told me about Breadtopia.com and that web site has changed my sourdough bread baking forever.
When the pandemic hit, grocery shelves were devoid of bread, so for that reason I decided to make bread more often but then flour and yeast were hard to find. I didn’t need yeast because I had my sourdough starter but I needed flour. So, I decided to grind my own flour from a variety of wheat berries that Breadtopia sells. They also sell the home mill. The benefits of freshly milled flour are many but mainly there are no preservatives and it uses the whole wheat berry which is so much more nutritious
I now use solely whole grain freshly milled flour that I mill myself in my Mockmill 100 home mill that my son gave me for my birthday.
The web site has many recipes and videos showing every step of the way and they sell all of the best products used in breadmaking, including the clay bakers and wheat berries. One of my favorite recipes is this Whole Spelt Sourdough Bread, shown below. If you are interested in trying this bread for yourself, here is the link to the recipe along with the video tutorials.
In honor of National Homemade Bread day on November 17th, I took a photo of one of my loaves and with the Photoshop trick that I showed in this blog post, I extracted the colors. I have often said that a perfect color palette for a quilt also includes neutrals. These colors make the brighter colors stand out.
Red Fort and Snowbirds are good examples of quilts with lots of neutrals worked into the colors.
In your next quilt project see if you can include neutrals in your color palette.
If you are interested in trying this bread for yourself, here is the link to the recipe along with the video tutorials.
50 years keeping your sourdough alive! I have also been making sourdough bread and using my Mockmill to grind the grain. I love that you extracted colors from your bread. I hope to make a big quilt this winter. Do far I have only made baby quilts.
I think these ‘bread’ colors will work very nicely with the National Cherry Pie fabrics I bought from you last July. They have been calling my name.
I made and enjoyed bread on Tuesday! Thanks for your inspiration as always!
Wonderful story! I have been making bread for only 12 years and have managed to succeed in sourdough making but not to this level! Wow! carry on! and post more of your breads, its a pleasure to see them!