I’m starting a new sourdough journey once again…

My journey with sourdough started in early 2020…before Covid…before sourdough was cool. In early 2020, my sourdough experience was really easy and really fulfilling. Every week I was making new loaves of bread. I was experimenting with jalapeño cheddar bread, and we loved every second of it. Bread was becoming a staple in our diet and one more thing that I could provide for my family with my own hands. It meant a lot.

About a year later, circa 2021, my sourdough just stop working. I don’t know what happened, but my only guess is life started getting back to normal. Andrew and I started traveling again and my sourdough left its cozy home on the island for frequent trips in and out of the refrigerator. This is only a guess; I have no actual evidence, but this is the only thing that I can tell that was different in 2021 compared to 2020.

My sourdough experience drastically dwindled; my loaves would come out flat or gummy or raw in the middle. I started watching tons of videos about sourdough and flipping through my different cookbooks to compare recipes. Over time, my starter just started getting really gross. I’m talking really bad.

Usually, sourdough starter has a potent smell, but the smell was even worse. I can’t even describe hat it was but it was a moldy, worse-than-sour smell. (Ew David.) The last thing I wanted to do was spend hours of my day and extra ingredients, like extra cheddar and jalapeños, making yet another loaf that wouldn’t work out. I eventually threw my starter away and started over.

My original starter meant a lot to me. 

Right before Covid, my sister and I made a trip to Baker Creek Seed Company in Mansfield, Missouri. I loved getting my starter from Baker Creek – they are a company and mission I truly support.  When the starter died, I decided I would make my own from scratch; it’d be easy right?  That’s what everyone did in 2020.  I watched all the videos, flipped through more cookbooks and found a recipe that seemed easy. 

I went down the 8-10 day process with so much confidence only to be disappointed. My homemade starter worked for me in the beginning, but it wasn’t perfect. It was never as good as the original sourdough starter from Baker Creek. I made a few loaves of bread, but none of them were great. That was when I basically gave up I figured that sourdough was just too much. I could make many rustic loaves of bread that were easier, faster, and didn’t take hours in the kitchen.

Rustic loaves of bread are what I’ve been making in all of 2022. It’s been fine, but not as good. Now that we’re at the end of the year and I’m mostly housebound until I get back into the garden, I am ready get back on the sourdough bandwagon. It’s uncomfortable and the fear of failure looms, but it’s a skill that I truly want to master. 

So here we are in December 2022.

I was graciously gifted about a tablespoon and a half of starter from The Sourdough Spot, a Kansas City sourdough baker and reinvigorated inspiration for a new sourdough journey! But, I have zero instructions. I mean, it’s fine because I have some experience with sourdough, but it does give me some anxiety because it forces me to go find a recipe, a process I’m not confident about because of the failure I’ve had in the past.

My recipe search brought me to  King Arthur Flour Company and their great blog post about what to do when you’ve been gifted a starter. I woke up excited this morning to begin following their instructions.

Eight hours later, the starter was rising and bubbly in the bowl. Before I went to bed tonight, I took the next step in the King Arthur recipe and discarded a bit of the newly risen starter and moved the starter into an actual jar where I can measure the height of the rise so I can hopefully bake in the morning. 

So cheers to the next step in the new sourdough journey.

I’m not giving up yet sourdough. Not yet.