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"Ugh!" Sam exclaimed as he walked into the bunker kitchen. His nose wrinkled in disgust and he brought the collar of his shirt up to cover it, to block out the acrid smell pervading his senses.
Dean, seemingly immune to the smell, stood at the stove flipping some pancakes. A plate of crispy bacon sat next to him, the greasy smell just barely registering in Sam's senses through the horrible one he was attacked with when he entered the kitchen.
"It smells like puke in here dude!" Sam hovered between the table and the door, unsure if his need for food was strong enough to put up with the smell. "What the hell?"
"Huh?" Dean turned around, and Sam made a mental note to make fun of his 'kiss the cook' apron later. "What do you mean? It smells like bacon?"
"No, Dean," Sam's exasperation bled into his tone. "It smells like vomit. Like actual vomit." He peered his head around the room, to try and see if he could find the source of the smell, to no avail.
"Ohhh, y'know what it might be?" Dean walked over to a shelf tucked away in the corner of the room, hidden by the other shelves. Sam waved his hand for Dean to continue, as he had seemingly paused for dramatic effect. Dean picked up a jar with a beige sludge in it, loosely covered by a piece of paper towel and an elastic band. He brought it over to Sam. "This!" He exclaimed, and proudly shoved it in Sam's direction, at which point a stronger waft of the smell made it's way to Sam and he held back a gag at it's sour smell.
"Dean," Sam's voice came out muffled, mouth and nose covered by his arm. "What is that?" The taller man took a step back, whole body recoiling away from the source of the horrible smell.
"It's my sourdough starter!" if Sam hadn't been so disgusted, he might have been happy to hear the pure joy in his brother's tone. "Or at least, it will be. The internet says that it will take at least a week to develop, but usually around a month," Dean appeared to be immune to the stench, as he walked the jar back to it's shelf and continued attending to his pancakes.
"That..." Sam trailed off, unsure of what to say, "Is disgusting," he said with finality. "How are we supposed to eat in the same room as that thing?"
Dean frowned. "I dunno what you're talking about! It smells a little gross, yeah, but it's not that bad," he waved Sam off.
Sam gave his brother a deadpan expression. "Dean. Leave the room for ten minutes, come back, and tell me it doesn't smell horrible."
Dean motioned to his pancakes, "But—!"
"I'll watch your pancakes!" Sam raised his voice. After a silent argument between the two, that lasted all of thirty seconds, Dean walked out of the room.
Sure enough, ten minutes later when Dean entered the room again, a grimace made it's way onto his face and Sam looked at Dean pointedly. "Yeah," Dean mimicked his brother's earlier actions, covering his nose with his collar. "That's bad. I'll—I'll do something about that."
...
One of the spare bedrooms had been sacrificed to be the home of the pungent-smelling starter. Over the next few weeks however, Dean diligently stuck to the strict 'feeding schedule' as he called it. One time he had left his phone unattended, and Castiel had spent a solid ten minutes trying to find Dean as his phone was blaring an alarm. It had turned out to be his daily reminder, and Dean then spent the next half an hour explaining his sourdough journey to Castiel who, by the end, still didn't fully understand how the sludge in the jar Dean so proudly held would one day become bread.
But sure enough the day came, and Sam got back from the store, welcomed by the smell of freshly baked bread. Dean had asked him to go out and get a variety of spreads to put on the bread he had been working on all day on—Sam didn't know why but apparently it needed to be kneaded every two hours, and overall, including all the rising time, was a fourteen hour process.
As Sam put down the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, he discovered a lump covered by a tea towel. Just as he lifted the towel to look at what it was covering, Dean walked into the room.
"Ah ah ah!" Dean tutted, and Sam flinched away from where he had been about to pick up the loaf of bread he had discovered.
"What?"
"The internet says to leave it until it's cool, then we can cut it open. It'll compromise it's structure!" Dean held the round loaf protectively to his chest. He was wearing the apron again. Sam stifled a laugh at the scene before him. "Shut up," Dean grumbled. "Not one word, or you don't get to have any."
...
When it finally became time for the three to try the bread—Castiel had appeared from his room in the time it took for the bread to cool down—Sam was pleasantly surprised. "Y'know," Sam's words came out garbled by the food in his mouth. "It's not actually that bad. And according to the internet, bread like this is actually good for you—"
"Shut up," Dean cut him off, pointing an accusatory finger at his brother. His cheeks were like a chipmunk's, puffed out and filled with bread and butter. "Don't ruin this for me."
"I agree with Sam," Castiel was the only one who had waited to finish the food in his mouth before speaking up. "These molecules are structured quite pleasantly. It's basic in a satisfying way."
Dean opened his mouth to question what Castiel meant exactly by that, before ultimately giving up and stuffing his mouth full of the bread again.
Very quickly however, Sam begun to get sick of the bread. It had almost turned into an obsession for Dean, and before the two knew it, every surface of the kitchen was covered in loaves that had been baked at various times throughout the week. One night, Sam found himself struggling to get to sleep, and when he got up, sure enough there Dean was, in the kitchen, starting a new batch of loaves. The two got into a slight argument, before Sam ultimately convinced Dean to get to sleep ("The bread can wait for the morning Dean!").
It got to the point where Dean had to start getting creative. He swiftly discovered that he could mix in different flavours into the dough—blueberry cream cheese, cheesy jalapeno, garlic butter, balsamic and sundried tomatoes, cinnamon and raisins, chocolate chips. He even started making more than just loaves, making bagels and flatbreads. Sam had to start bringing spare loaves with them when they went to visit Jody, as the three of them in the bunker couldn't keep up with the speed at which Dean was baking the bread.
Every time Sam went to make fun of Dean for his most recent obsession, not even the teasing deterred the man. Eventually though, he did slow down with his new hobby. Sure, anyone in the bunker could always rely on there being bread at any time, a fresh loaf always on hand. But they were no longer drowning in sourdough loaves, for which Sam was very grateful for.