Sourdough Bread Baking Diary: My 4-Month Report & Why I’m Still In Love!

My sourdough bread baking journey started with curiosity and has turned into a weekly joy. Here are 9 reasons why, four months in, I’m still baking away!

While the sun was still rising in its blue sky and the house was all quiet, I pitter pattered my bare feet to the kitchen this morning to feed my sourdough starter.

As I poured, measured, and whisked it together, I started to think about this sourdough bread baking journey and it made me chuckle.

9 Reasons Why I Love Baking Sourdough Bread

1. Baking bread once a week becomes a new routine. Yes, baking sourdough bread was a learning curve – but a good one! Although I don’t necessarity do it on exactly the same day each week, it does happen weekly.
2. The timeline of sourdough baking can be altered to fit your schedule. My friend’s timeline that she shared (and I wrote about in great detail in this beginners guide to baking sourdough bread in a dutch oven) works great. But, now that I’ve done it for a while, I switch up the timeline to fit into my schedule. It took some mental gymnastics the first few times I diverted from her schedule, but now I just think through the timeline and adjust accordingly.

3. Sourdough bread tastes so good – crispy on the outside and soft & moist in the center. My niece was visiting from Montana last month and fell in love with sourdough bread. “You’ve ruined storebought bread for me now,” was her comment. So, once she got home, she found some starter and made some, too. I just loved getting text messages with the picture progress of her first ever loaf!
4. You can use sourdough starter in other recipes. Baking sweet things with sourdough is lots of fun – but they aren’t necessarily “quick & easy” recipes like throwing a cake mix together. It feels like old fashioned baking – and I think it tastes like it, too – so yummy and more wholesome somehow. Here are two of the sweet sourdough recipes I’ve tried so far: sourdough muffins (you can add whatever fruit you want) and sourdough brownies (our son LOVES these!).
5. Sourdough bread baking saves money. I didn’t really think about this aspect of sourdough bread when I started baking it. In reality, sourdough bread is just flour, water, and salt. I can make a lot of loaves of bread with one bag of flour! In addition to long fermented dutch oven sourdough bread, I often make a batch of honey oat sourdough bread, too. My husband loves to make sandwiches for his lunches.

7. Sourdough bread baking doesn’t require a ton of special equipment – but it’s available if you want it! I was determined to make sourdough bread without buying any fancy tools to start with. I did that for 3 months, but now that I know I’m going to stick with it, I have purchased a few things. The danish whisk is absolutely amazing for breaking up the sourdough starter when whisking it with water, and an actual bread lame works so much better for scoring the loaf than a straight razor does! My straight razor started to go rusty really fast… I just bought myself a silpat mat to save on parchment paper in the baking process. I will use it for the first time when I bake the bread tomorrow. We’ll see how it works. The next thing I’ll probably buy is a banaten basket to proof it in. So, yes, then I’ll have all the sourdough gadgets! I could have just bought the starter kit. ha ha!!
8. Sourdough bread has been good for my fussy tummy. I hesitate to state the health benefits of sourdough bread here, since health and nutrition isn’t my expertise. However, I encourage you to study up yourself to see if it might be of help to you for your dietary needs. I admit I’ve always loved bread, but thought that I needed to cut it out completely to keep my weight down. Instead, I’ve been trying to eat sourdough bread – in moderation – and my stomach seems to love it! I particularily like to have it toasted with avocados on it. (Here’s what I do for how to freeze avocados – making it so quick and convenient!)
9. You don’t have to be a sourdough expert to start. And…you don’t become an expert in sourdough overnight! Yes, I’ve been baking and enjoying sourdough every week for 4 weeks, but if you ask me to troubleshoot a problem you have with your sourdough – I won’t be able to help you!!;) Because sourdough is a living culture, working with it is like science. And, every person’s sourdough starter becomes unique to them as soon as they add their own water and flour. Temperature, humidity, filtered water, and all kinds of things play into how it turns out, and I just don’t understand it all! But, if you have questions – google them, and you’ll probably find lots of opinions, options, and ideas.

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