missing 'home'

My trustworthy book about the healing properties of semi-precious stones told me that wearing an amber would make me aware of traditions (and other things as well). I found my grandmothers old amber-pendant-necklace and had almost forgotten about what the book had said until I found myself looking at an old german cookbook of mine, squealing in delight at the pictures of antique scales and rolling pins and daydreaming of opening a german bakery.

It would be like a scene of Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" (the house of the three fairies), with a medieval german twist. And of course, only german breads, rolls, cakes and cookies! Oh I miss them! I guess it has to do with me missing the secure feeling of living at home, being taken care of and loved, having family time baking and eating. *Sigh* Can't wait for Christmas!
As it looks like I'm not going to open a german style bakery any time soon, so I've decided to do the next best thing, which is to make good old sourdough bread from scratch. Hmm I love sourdough bread. It's the main kind of bread in Germany. We barely ever ate toast bread.
All you have to do is mix 1 part flour with 1 part water in a plastic bowl, stir with a non-metal utensil and then wait. Stir a few times a day and once a day add more flour and water. Soon you should have caught yourself a yeast! Or a mold. That's what happened the last time I tried this. The instructions were wrong, well, they said I HAD to wait 7 or so days, but I don't. Caught mold on the very last day of course.
My dough is coming nicely, I have caught yeast, it smells a little strong right now, but that should settle. As soon as it smells like either apples or vinegar it's going in the oven!
I remember when I was young, our next door neighbor came over one day and gave us a jar of sourdough starter called 'Hermann'. As it turned out, it was a kind of a travelling dough, it came with instructions on how to feed it and make it get more, then you had enough to fill up a number of jars to give to your friends and bake yourself some yummy bread too! I guess you could compare it to chain mail. But much more delicious! How neat would it be to start that tradition in the States.....