The joys of sourdough baking

Rachel has turned into a tremendous fan of sourdough, perhaps in part because I keep referring to our sourdough mixture as "our pet." Today, after we used a generous donation from our pet to make some sourdough pizza, Rachel told me that she wanted to use our pet to make pretzels sometime.

So I have gone and found myself a recipe for sourdough  pretzels. They look delicious. We'll have to try them on Tuesday, when she's  home from preschool.

Next step should be to find a good recipe for sourdough bagels, since  bagels are about the only bread product I'm still buying at the supermarket.  Although of course I don't want to end up baking nonstop, since there are other  things I have to do in life. (But this is fun, and I can't deny a certain appeal  to making bread the way it was made for thousands of years. I'm probably going  to break off some of our pet to take camping next month so we can try making  fresh bread over the campfire if we're up for it.)

The sourdough pizza, by the way, had a very strong flavor to it. I had put  our pet out on the table overnight Friday, and when I came down Saturday  morning, she had swollen to twice her earlier volume. It was a very  striking contrast to what had happened when I made the sourdough bread, and I  now suspect that it was too chilly the other night to proof the starter properly,  which is why the bread tasted kind of bland and floury.

I need to stop referring to this as "our pet." I need to ask the girls to  give the yeast a name, since they've already decided that it's a  "she."