Sour Dough Tool Kit

I was browsing Aldi’s Aisle of Shame this week and found a $14.99 Artisan Bread Kit. I’ve been baking sour dough bread once a week for 9 months now, ever since a woman from my church study group gave me some starter. I poked my head out of my little world a month later, and I learned everybody is making sour dough. At first I thought it was my reticular activating system acting up with the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (you buy a blue Ford Focus, and suddenly it seems like everybody is driving a blue Ford Focus in your neighborhood). But no, really everyone around me who works from home, is raising children, or is retired is baking sour dough. Now seeing the kit at Aldi, it was confirmed. Sour Dough is Hot.

The kit was not a need. I survived 9 months baking without special tools. I did my typical mental gymnastics: Was it in my budget? Could I justify the space it would take up on my counter? Would I actually us the things in it? What all was even in this box? In typical Aldi fashion, the box label was cryptic and the photo confusing.

I had just gotten into baking yeast bread again

last winter. I haven’t enjoyed guilt-free slices of carbohydrates since protein was hot 20 years ago. I was yearning for my mother's yeasty loaf of white bread that I grew up on, but after 3 failed loaves in a row, I was willing to give sour dough a go.

Standing in that aisle, trying not to take up space while the moms with fussy kids in carts and the old man bargain-hunting the shelves moved around me, I gauged my motives. Matthew 6 runs through it’s course. Will moths destroy this treasure I’m trying to store on earth? Yes, flour does go bad. An embarrassingly old Y2K bucket of wheat flour just does not rise. I found that out when getting back into the yeast bread. Bulk buying lessons are in another post.

What about 1 Timothy 6? There’s a line about being content with food. And I was making good, wholesome food for my family. It’s proper to have the right tools, I thought.

I bought the kit, and my dough is rising in the proofing basket right now. I am going to enjoy the food God is providing me, guilt free from the complex carbohydrates. I know deep down that my excess weight is not due to a slice of homemade sour dough. There are plenty of other guilty subjects in my diet.

A little shot of joy rippled through me as I was able to scrape the last bit of glue-y dough off my metal bowl with the surprisingly sturdy dough whisk. I give God thanks for the simple pleasure. Maybe I should make an extra loaf for my neighbor.