Just a beginner

I'm a beginning baker. I started baking my own bread for a few reasons. One reason is that I like baking. I enjoy being able to produce something home-made. Another is that I hate spending $3-4 on a decent loaf of bread. I knew that I could learn to make good bread myself, given some time and effort. It would be cheaper, and taste better, than anything I could buy.

There's also something primal about making bread, something that recalls an earlier time when all bread was made by hand. People have been baking bread for thousands upon thousands of years. All of my ancestors, with exceptions only for relatives born in very recent times, baked bread with their own hands and ingenuity. There's no reason I can't do it too.

I only started baking bread regularly a few months ago. I am self-taught. I have one sandwich bread recipe I've made over and over, and I've started playing with it a little to improve its taste and appearance. In my mind, my first "milestone" as a baker occurred a few weeks ago when I used up my first jar of yeast.

Second milestone: I created my own sourdough starter! It's been bubbling and growing for about a week, and my first sourdough loaf is proofing right now. Maybe I will post an update once it is baked.