What does a Sourdough class, BBQ pigs, auto dealers, and the Heisman trophy have in common?

I like going to restaurant supply houses. Sometimes you will find kitchen tools that are hard to find. Sometimes you will find great prices on items. We had discovered another restaurant supply store and they were having a sale with demonstrations and free food, a BBQ pig out in the parking lot, and lots of those triangle shaped colored flags that used auto dealers really seem to like. I believe the new auto dealers prefer colored balloons but that's not a proven fact yet. I've often wondered, do auto dealers sit around a huge conference table and brainstorm to come up with new ways to sell cars? Finally, one of them suggests red balloons, and someone else pipes in no, blue balloons, and finally a third starving auto dealer says, red AND blue balloons, THAT will sell cars. And they all go finally, we've got a way to sell all those cars out there in the sun. Anyway, we stopped and went in after sampling the pig in the parking lot. I entered the raffle for a free trip to Paris. I didn't win, so I'm here hammering away at the keyboard. But I did sign up for the raffle for a sourdough baking class, and wouldn't you know out of all the people that entered it, they picked me!

So, I didn't go to Paris, I went to Sacramento instead and wound up taking this class. My thought of course, is to incorporate the sourdough techniques into my pizza dough. They gave us a sourdough starter that has been kept alive for over 250 years. It seemed odd because neither of the instructors looked that old. (Must have been their make-up.) Maybe they didn't have any fresh sourdough starter or maybe there was no expiration date on the stuff they gave us;-) In any event, we learned the process for making sourdough bread. We even baked a couple loaves of our own that were highly successful.

I remember that about 3 months ago I was laughing at the thought of sourdough starters. People in YouTubes revering it like it was the Holy Grail or the Arc of the Covenant. I'm beginning to understand the value of these starters now in making bread (and pizza) taste their best. I haven't become one of those people (yet) that calls it their pet, names it and runs home from the middle of a movie to feed their pet. From the class I was able to successfully bring home two beautiful loaves or baguettes as they are called, with the photos I took of them as well.

I'm thinking of keeping these pix in my wallet along with pix of my new oven too. I went home and was so inspired that I made Danish Kringle (without sourdough starter) and Belgian style dessert waffles with real Swedish Perle Sugar and coated in chocolate fudge with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Sheri took this picture of me and told me to be serious. I love the statue of the Heismann trophy and decided I would pose like that, although Heisman didn't have his mom standing in front of him nor was he carrying a Danish Kringle...or was he?