Starter Restart
I took up baking sourdough bread as most of the world did when the pandemic broke and lockdowns began. There is nothing quite like turning flour and water into something edible. I’m by absolutely no means an expert but it was the best teacher of “trusting the process”. I found it to be a satisfying, rewarding, and meditative experience until it wasn’t.
One year later, I’m given a portion of mature starter and am back to measuring to the gram, feeling all science-y, and excited to be making bread again. It really wasn’t just a phase.
Here are some of the articles and videos that helped me to make my first loaf, and the second, and so on. I hope you find this helpful, too.
The Perfect Loaf has a comprehensive guide to sourdough bread-baking from making your own starter to plotting out a schedule so you can bake a loaf mid-week to recipes, to make with your discard.
On Instagram, Tara Jensen, chronicled her starter journey through the first week making it easy for the rest of us to see what starter should look like daily for the first week and then how to keep it alive. Her discard loaf is my go-to sourdough recipe.
Joshua Weissman’s Ultimate Sourdough Starter Guide is a must-watch. It’s not called “ultimate” for nothing. If you’re looking for visual cues with time-lapses and a reason to buy a weck jar, this is the right place.
Joshua Weissman really knows what he’s doing so go watch how he makes his beginner sourdough bread and thank me later. His recipe uses more than one type of flour and is out of my budget but the methods for folding, scheduling, and baking are all there.
In this video, Claire Saffitz makes sourdough bread and it was comforting to watch because her process really looked similar to mine. Messy bowl and wet dough included.
I really like Joshua Weissman. Here’s his collab video with Binging with Babish where they both make sourdough bread and we live through Andrew Rea’s noob-ness learning from the master.
I’m proud to say I’ve hacked my way to making sourdough bread without a Dutch oven or a bread lame with the help from friends and this video by Pro Home Cooks. Yes, I chuck in ice into a searing hot oven.