At the start of the year, I tackled the task of being a sourdough mom. I purchased a dehydrated starter and set about trying to wake it up. After about a week, it was time to tackle actually making bread. There is so much that goes into it, but the best way to understand it is to jump right in, see the finished result, and then keep making tweaks from there until it’s exactly the way it should be. 

One of the tweaks I had to make was to start using warm water when I fed my starter and when I mixed the dough. Warm water will help the fermentation process much better because the temperature agrees better with the bacteria that causes the dough to rise. The warmth encourages more growth. Pair this with putting the dough in a warm place when it’s set aside to rise? Those are two tweaks that make for a more fluffy, delicious loaf of bread.

If you think about it, 1 Peter had to be a very revolutionary letter to the church. Peter, a jew and disciple of Jesus, repeatedly asserts how Christ’s work on the cross put Jews and Gentiles on the same playing field. Until the cross, there was a clear line between the two groups because the Jews were God’s chosen people under His covenant with Abraham. But Jesus’ spilt blood on the cross meant that not only Jews but Gentiles as well could be brought into the family of God and enjoy the same inheritance, grace, and spirituality that was reserved for Jews only up to that point.