daily bread

All creation, join in praising God the Father, Spirit, Son;

Evermore your voices raising to th' eternal Three in One:

Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ,

the newborn King.

Angels From the Realms of Glory, fifith stanza

James Montgomery 

Bread is made from three basic ingredients:  flour, salt and water. Four if you choose to use flour and water to make an ongoing live culture of sourdough starter.

My entire family has finally given me the five stars on this recipe of sourdough bread. And the key word here is entire family. I consider myself to have climbed a very steep mountain at last and it makes me happy. Because Charlotte is home from school until mid January and it is the holidays where more are gathered around my table at times, I usually  bake a loaf about every other day. We like toast, we like sandwiches, we like bread for soup soppings, and just general buttered bread for dinner. This bread recipe provides it all. Another thing that makes me happy. I persevered in my sourdough journey using several recipes from various sources, tweaking here and there to make it come together for me. 

I begin the process in the morning and it basically takes all day. Nothing fast or hurried, I like that about bread making. Yesterday we celebrated my husband's birthday so today I am baking another loaf. The process was began this morning and it takes basically all day. Since my kitchen is chillier than the other rooms in my house, the present loaf is rising by the fire on a trivet in the living room.

  I received this tea as a gift form my daughter -in -law and made myself a cup while I was beginning my bread,

and I was listening to a  Christmas CD of Twila Paris. 

At the beginning of each blog post until Christmas I will be sharing a stanza of a Christmas hymn. Many of these stanzas are not as familiar and they are rich.