California. I'm not looking forward to mashed avocado.

Sourdough as in miners or sourdough as in the bread?

Some facts about California.

• The origin of one of the most successful restaurants in the US, and possible in the world: McDonalds.

• It's also the grower of 99 percent of the dates in the US. Dates as in the fruit.

• In 1848 during the California Gold Rush, miners were often called “sourdoughs”, since they often carried sourdough bread starter with them to make sourdough bread.

• The shallow, warm lagoons are the birthplace of all grey whale calves. Kinda neat, huh?

Because of San Francisco, the food chosen by the SoMP (States on My Plate) Executive Board (my family) was sourdough bread. Californians love eating avocado toast so we decided to top our bread with mashed avocado spread. Yay. I don't love avocados. Anyway, since Mom’s already got a sourdough starter, and is a sourdough expert, there were a few good reasons for the SoMP Exec board to choose this meal.

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The starter's child.

We started with the levain, which is a part of the sourdough starter that is taken from the main starter and fed lots of flour, so as to not diminish the main starter. So that's what we did. We let it rise, and by the time it was done, it had nearly doubled in size!!!

While the levain (the starter's child) was levaining, we started the autolyse, which is done by taking all of the ingredients for the bread (lots of flour) and letting it sit without the starter in it to let the flour prep and let the gluten relax.

After we let the starter rise for an hour, we mixed the autolyse and the starter together, stretched it out to ensure that everything was properly incorporated. Let me tell you, stretching it with my hands was so very fun. Once the now-dough was mixed, we let our creation rise for the time duration of four hours, mixing every half an hour. We stretched with our hands three times (three half an hours) and then left it alone for the next two and a half hours.

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In the fridge to rise overnight. We can't finish these dang loaves in a single day.

Once the dough had finished rising, we cut it into two separate balls so that we had two loaves. One for me, one for mom. We stretched the loaves, and let them rise for 30 minutes. Is it just me, or is this a little time-consuming?

Once we had cut and stretched the loaves, we put them in some swirly wooden bowl things with fabric in ‘em. Once they were in the swirly wooden bowl things with fabric in ‘em, we put ‘em in the fridge to rise overnight. Yes, we can't finish these dang loaves in a single day. Goodnight.

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Day 2. Man, more bread?!?

The next morning we heated our dutch oven inside of our real oven to ensure the dutch oven was preheated enough to cook the loaves and kill the yeast. I don’t want no yeast living inside the bread I’m about to freaking eat.

While the ovens were heating, we scored the bread. Scoring is done so the bread doesn't pop while cooking. I decided to anoint my bread with a letter E.

Once the ovens were preheated, we put the loaves inside our dutch oven and put the lid on. After 20 minutes, we took the lid off. 30 more minutes and the bread was done baking.

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Avocado toast. It's green. And it's mushy.

Once the loaves were done, we mixed our concoction of mashed avocado, lemon juice, and salt together to create our avocado mush spread that was later put onto the cooked, sliced, and ready-to-eat sourdough.

Now, there’s something you readers need to know. I am not particularly fond of avocados. I don’t like ‘em. Don’t like ‘em at all. So when I say I quite enjoyed the avocado toast, and I did, that’s saying something. Before every bite, and I’m not kidding, I thought to myself “This is going to be nasty”. And after every bite, it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.

The avocado spread added a nice tangy flavor to the rich sourdough. They were both delicious and that's coming from someone who hates avocados. Moral of the story: try food you're scared of. Like avocado.