This post is for those who thought that we could spend all this time at sea without bread. Let me tell you that we couldn't!

If you already tried to bake bread, you might have experienced that it is a real learning curve, and onboard taught us to let go and trust our fellow salty crew, regardless of the efforts you put in to mix the dough or knead it, as usually the one making the bread isn't the one who will shape and bake it.

Our breadmaking journey started this year in Den Helder with a sourdough starter given by a generous bakery from Amsterdam and a recipe that has been used onboard in previous years.

Sourdough bread is a real art and is quite demanding, as you need to feed the sourdough starter, make the dough, knead it, proof it, shape it, bake it and finally enjoy it. To make things a little more spicy and interesting, imagine all this being done in a moving galley, where you have to dive into the bouncing dry store to pick up flour when you can be called at any time on deck for maneuvers while your hands are dipped in flour, and where the temperature and moisture evolve as we sail along different latitudes.

As we all love to have fresh crispy warm bread for breakfast, the bread-making process is split in between watches to have it ready for 7h30. The dough is thus made from 20 to 00, knead and proofed from 00 to 04 and baked from 04 to 08.

We have been experimenting with many different consistencies and shapes, and don't get it wrong, all bread was always appreciated, however, not all looked like bread. Don't get mistaken, bread making is not a fair game, regardless of the time and energy you put into it!

As a sourdough starter needs to be fed 3 times a day, ours became one of the “babies” we have onboard, got a name and got taken care of by all of us alternatively, big up to those who have taken greater care.

Here is a shortened version of the sourdough starter saga.

Early in our journey, our first sourdough starter had been named Herbert. To supply our bread consumption, the sourdough starter had to get bigger but still fit in the galley. That's how Herbert got split in two one morning and became Her and Bert respectively.

Eventually, Her got spread all over the galley table by a gentle wave one morning. Scooped straight back into her homepot, she turned out the next day to be more active than Bert! Accidents sometimes make things better than they were before!

However, all stories do not necessarily end well. Unfortunately, our beloved sourdough did not survive the post north Atlantic ocean crossing in our stopover in Martinique where they got left aside a little too long, ending up with respectively an ore-dish and blue-greenish colors on their tops.

Fortunately, as all sailors have to have at least a plan B, we've been backing up our sourdough attempts with dry yeast, which turned out to be the easiest, less demanding and best bread results we made so far.

For those how are curious, here is the recipe the Tres Hombres crew (almost) always succeeds to make.

In a bowl, put 2 kg of flour with:

2 Tablespoons of salt for the taste

1/2 Teaspoon of dry yeast for the fluffiness

2 Tablespoons of sugar to feed the yeast

A drop of vinegar to reduce the yeast taste and help fermentation

Mix dry ingredients and add 1 liter of water.

Cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise for 6 to 10 hours depending on which latitude you are
sailing by.

Shape and bake for an hour at 230 degrees. Enjoy! (For nicer results use a Dutch oven!)

Do you enjoy reading our crew's adventures? Imagine being there when you enjoy our products at home!