Sour dough bread is potentially the easiest bread there is to make; all you need is flour and water. I made my first, and only, attempt at baking bread while I was living on Clio Street in New Orleans and it ended in such udder failure that I hardly want to admit. For those who don’t know sour dough bread is made using a mixture of flour and water that takes the place of yeast, actually, the flour and water collect yeast that magically falls from the sky! The starter is the most difficult part of the bread because it gets better with age – it lives in a jar and has to be fed, flour and water, daily to continue life.
My starter was given to me, magic and all included, by my neighbor and landlord Sean, who, with his wife Jacqui, had been on the sour dough bread trip for months. Sean has lived there for the past ten years and witnessed the streets monumental change – ten years ago the only thing that would have been baking in the neighborhood ovens was crack cocaine, if even that - I doubt the hustlers that used to slang rock next door were even that high on the food chain.
According to Sean the crack dealers moved off of our block about one year before Hurricane Katrina and things on the street started to really look up after The Storm. There was an influx of life, some magic that fell from the sky, and everything changed. For one thing this was about the time when Dwayne, finally doing a historic restoration for himself, started to work on the abandoned house directly across the street – the one to the left in the picture – and Gary and Elizabeth took possession of their 1850s mansion, converted into a welding shop circa 1950, and started to convert it back into a mansion – slash yoga studio. Aside: both projects are being completed with energy efficient building systems and recycled materials.
My starter was given to me, magic and all included, by my neighbor and landlord Sean, who, with his wife Jacqui, had been on the sour dough bread trip for months. Sean has lived there for the past ten years and witnessed the streets monumental change – ten years ago the only thing that would have been baking in the neighborhood ovens was crack cocaine, if even that - I doubt the hustlers that used to slang rock next door were even that high on the food chain.
According to Sean the crack dealers moved off of our block about one year before Hurricane Katrina and things on the street started to really look up after The Storm. There was an influx of life, some magic that fell from the sky, and everything changed. For one thing this was about the time when Dwayne, finally doing a historic restoration for himself, started to work on the abandoned house directly across the street – the one to the left in the picture – and Gary and Elizabeth took possession of their 1850s mansion, converted into a welding shop circa 1950, and started to convert it back into a mansion – slash yoga studio. Aside: both projects are being completed with energy efficient building systems and recycled materials.
Yes, Clio Street does seem to like bread better and the community is starting to flourish. Dwayne would come over to Sean’s for his daily dose of bread, Gary would walk down the street with his dogs and we would all share cooking tips, plan a grocery store for the empty building on the corner or talk city zoning changes.
I will miss the warm bread with butter and the impromptu pot-luck dinners but most of all I will miss the need to leave 15 minutes early to make time for the conversations I knew I would be drawn into on just on the other side of my door.
I will miss the warm bread with butter and the impromptu pot-luck dinners but most of all I will miss the need to leave 15 minutes early to make time for the conversations I knew I would be drawn into on just on the other side of my door.
