Settling into bread rhythms, and part 1 of Abigail...

For many years I have chased the elusive perfect sourdough bread recipe. I remember my first attempt back in 2000, visiting a homeschool friend with the children. Her family had moved over from Sweden and she had quite an alternative lifestyle, and I'd never met anyone like her before. Apart from the children always barefoot, their beds made out of trees her husband had felled from their backyard, a swing in the bedroom made from  more trees, completely 'unstructured unschooling', and all her shelves full of alternative medicines, tinctures and salves etc, she could do the most amazing things with sourdough. 

We had not long begun homeschooling our 6 and 7yo children, having previously homeschooled Kezzie for a year in high school, and were still in the workbook mindset (though we soon switched to Charlotte Mason and never looked back) when we met this family, and it was through the mum, who became a really good friend, that my interest in natural health began, most noticeably at first with the everyday food choices we made. 

For a few years I made my sourdough, lentil patties, and hummus, exactly the same way my friend taught me, and we juiced every single day, but then we moved away to another state in January 2003, and I soon began playing around with different recipes and ideas. 

Bread became my focus, but not sourdough. I loved kneading and folding and creating all sorts of loaves by hand, and my family loved it all. It didn't matter that we had to move into a tiny one bedroom cabin atop a freezing mountain range for six months in 2005 - there was a small oven so I could still make bread every day. To be honest, the children have always agreed that those six months in 2005 were the best years of their childhood. But back to sourdough...

Off and on for the next few years, I would dabble with sourdough, but would then go back to regular bread baking, trying other things like focaccia, wholegrains, cinnamon scrolls, pita bread, pumpernickel, jam rolls or fruit loaves, until I perfected them and knew the recipe would stay the same for the rest of my life.

Around 2013 I was baking sourdough again, every second day, but with a cheat. I'd use my starter, but also add some instant yeast, so that I could rise the dough in 90 minutes and bake bread immediately after. It was still good, not as sour, but a cheat nonetheless. 

I fell off the wagon again the following year, and went back to regular bread baking, or buying ready baked loaves. My stitchery club had taken off and so I had less time to work in the kitchen. By dropping sourdough I could focus on making healthy meals instead, and back to daily juicing. 

Since we bought this house and moved in just over seven years ago, I have gone back and forth with sourdough recipes, as the internet is swarming with them, the library has an entire shelf of sourdough cookbooks, and YouTube virtually overflows with sourdough aficionados! Which is why I was going back and forth - try one way, give up. Try another, not too bad, but next loaf fails, try another, doesn't work in my climate...and you get the picture. 

And then seven months ago I read about the old way, the original way, the NON-artisan way, to regularly bake a loaf of sourdough. Then I found someone on YouTube who tried the old way and succeeded...definitely intrigued me. But then the knee issue, the arm issue, and generally no interest in anything other than baking regular loaves of bread every few days, or opting for a store bought. 

But last week. Aha. Someone in Alaska, living off grid with her family, shared how she made her sourdough bread the way they did 100 years ago, in a day, with no weighing, no frills, just basic steps and a great loaf at the end. 

I thought, no way...this won't work for me because she's off grid in snow laden Alaska, and I'm in a monsoonal hot and humid wet season in the tropics! But you know, I was intrigued. So I gave it a go. And it worked. I have never known such an easy sourdough recipe, and not one that you could make and bake the same day. 

You can see how big my loaf was in the photos above. I used half white bread flour, and half freshly milled spelt grain flour, and the sour dough starter in my fridge from three weeks ago. Truly, the size of the loaf and how quickly it rose that morning surprised me. Then to have it rise again in the dutch oven (we have a small one, too small for a loaf obviously, so now I need a larger one, or make smaller loaves) and be so delicious that hubby and I were spreading the butter and homemade apricot jam on for dinner last night, well - and so this is that one sourdough, that best recipe/technique I have been waiting for since 2000. And it's a keeper.

Now this lady spends a lot of the video showing you how to make a starter over seven days, but as I always have a starter in my fridge that I feed every few weeks and which bubbles up within an hour of being on the table in the warm air of our home, I fast forwarded through that and went straight to what she did on the day she baked her loaf. 

If you're interested in watching the video, it's here...

...and my husband found this one last night about the history of sourdough and why it was so healthy for people in the Middle Ages. Fascinating! My husband has always loved my bread, but now he's wanting a sourdough loaf to be our everyday loaf. Bless him!

ABIGAIL STUDY - part one:

I shared the first part of the Abigail Bible Study today, and if you pop over HERE to the study page you can read through on the page or download the PDF to your computer files. 

Love to hear your own thoughts, and thanks to everyone who is joining in because we can learn a lot from each other's insights along the way. 

Tuesdays with the Family...

Every Tuesday Blossom and the children come over for the day. We have the very best of times with a special morning tea, and lunch, and plenty of activities to do inside (the monsoon has been endless). Blossom coloured this for me last week, and now I want to find a frame for it. Love my girl so much.

Whether it be scones with jam and cream, and bowls of fruit, or the table spread with ingredients for the kids to make their own pizzas, nobody goes home hungry from Nana's house. In fact there are always leftovers to take home for daddy Ross. 

This Tuesday they got some of my huge blankets and spread them across dining chairs and couches to make a cubby, before dividing it all into two cubbies so they could be neighbours. Charlie broke his arm on Boxing Day, for the second time in a year, but nothing slows him down! We're pretty sure he'll grow up to be the next Bear Grylls. ;-)

Before I go, when I shared the last post and the photo of my basket of UFOs and kits for the Adventure 2026 project, I forgot to show the gift hubby got me for Christmas. 

Sheepie. 

We don't bother with big gifts, and some years no gifts at all, but he knows how much I love farm animals and thought I'd like a sheep for the garden. I love my sheepie!! But he's not going in the garden. He sits on my desk and I talk to him as though he's real. I cannot express just how much I love my husband. He's a gift from God everyday. 

Oh, another before I go...you know the huge poincianna that almost killed my husband when it split and came down twice last February? 

He chopped the remains and we were not sure whether to plant another or not. Well, God answered us in the middle of 2025. A new tree sprung up right beside the trunk of the other one - and this came up from a seed, not from the trunk. 

In just six months it is at least 14 feet tall!

I can stand under it and the top of my head just touches the bottom branch. Amazing! With all this rain, and the wet season still in the early days, I think by mid year it will already be huge. 

God bless you all, and thanks for hanging in here today. I have to sign off and go feed the pets as they are letting me know it's getting late. 

May you be blessed in all you do for your family and home...whether that be baking bread, cooking a meal, washing the dishes, mopping the floor, or tending a loved one who is unwell. God sees those little things too, not just the big things. His eyes is on the sparrow, and He's watching over you. xxx