I would tell a lie if I told you I eat a lot of bread. I actually eat very little bread. However, when I have it, and when I make it, I devour it in a heartbeat. You could say that bread is my weakness when it’s available. But it must be fresh, hot out of the oven bread.

It’s only natural that my very first job was working in a little Mennonite store in Remington, Virginia. I’ve always said that my cooking and baking skills came from that stage in life rather than from my mother or grandmother. I never got many opportunities to cook “with” my mom or grandma, or maybe I simply wasn’t interested in it at the time. But as I have grown and now have a family of my own, I often think of cooking and baking with grandma now. The sad fact is that I now cook and bake for her, instead of with her. Slow down, time….you’re taking the people we love away from us much too quickly.

A few years ago a friend of my mothers sent me a sourdough starter through the mail. I was terrified that the white powdery substance would be inspected as some chemical war of terror, but it made it safely to my mailbox in just a few short days — from North Carolina to good ol’ Virginia.

Sourdough was a brand new thing to me. I loved eating sourdough, but I never understood the complex science behind it. I’m a fermenting queen now, but back then? No way.

The history of sourdough is simple. People needed an option to preserve and make something on a regular basis. Fermentation was one of the very first ways of preserving food for our ancestors. Yes, it came long before canning.

But with something so simple, I failed. I failed miserably the first time. I even had to ask for more suspicious white powdery mailed substance so that I could start all over again — and then I failed again. Eventually I gave up because I didn’t have the time for this complex science. Recently, however, I discovered it’s not science at all, but an art.

I began with my very own sourdough starter this time. Not that I didn’t admire my friends shared starter, but I wanted a legacy. I wanted a starter that could be passed down to my son’s wife or, if we ever have one, our own daughter. Of course, the starter would be 20 years or more old by then, but that’s the beauty of it. Isn’t this something every mom thinks of? No?

I thought I had failed again, oh my word, my future daughter-in-law in the year of 2035 won’t have a family generational sourdough starter of her own. How silly. But by the fifth day the smell of fermented grains filled my kitchen. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought my husband had a hops binge the night before…without me….how rude.

I had not failed. My 2035 daughter-in-law would have a sourdough starter of her own…bless her heart. And I would now have fresh sourdough for my family every 3 days.

It’s simple and easy. The starter stays on your counter. You feed it everyday. And then you use it when it comes time to make bread. You should know that it takes about 12 hours for your bread to rise completely. So you’ll want to make sure you start it the night before or early that morning of cooking.