Kate Downham

Kickstarter have now verified that this is all ready to go! The Sourdough Without Fail Kickstarter will begin on the 7th of October, 3pm mountain time!

Here's the link to the preview, if you want to see the exciting 3d reward images and pick up on any errors or things I could fix before it goes live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katedownham/sourdough-without-fail?ref=8ow4dc&token=55a95884

I’m planning to launch the Kickstarter for my sourdough baking book in October!

Here's the first two paragraphs of the Kickstarter:

Anyone can make great sourdough bread. Whether you’re in the middle of a city, or growing your own grain on a homestead, you can make great bread in your home kitchen.

Most baking books show how to make bread in ideal conditions, often with strict timelines, expensive gadgets, hard-to-find ingredients, and waste. Sourdough Without Fail: 100% Wholegrain Bread, Pizza, and Pastries for any Kitchen breaks the boundaries of sourdough baking, showing you how to work with what you have to make great bread in all conditions.

I've set up a pre-launch page with some photos and more information about the book, where you can click 'notify me on launch' if you'd like Kickstarter to email you as soon as it's live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katedownham/sourdough-without-fail?ref=aulp1k

I’m keen to get some feedback on a couple of things before I do this:

• Do you find the title, cover, and the focus of the book appealing?

• Will you be backing the Kickstarter?

• Do you have any other feedback or questions about the Kickstarter or the book?

• It’s not too late to tinker with the cover or the Kickstarter image. I am thinking of putting a 3d mockup of the book on the image instead of the 2d cover as it currently is. Can the cover or the image be improved in any way?

• Do you have any ideas for what to include in the earlybird bundle? Are there any small ebooks of mine you would like to see? Or anything that someone else has made that might be a good fit for this?

• Any ideas for how to make this a really great Kickstarter?

Looks like this one is the current favourite... Does anyone have any more feedback to offer before I finalise it?

Gilly Burke wrote:Forgot to ask, can some bread recipes be baked ok in a slow cooker? I realise temperature may not be high enough for some - if not all- breads. I have an old electric one and an off grid one. This is the off grid one:

https://mrdscookware.com/product-category/thermal-cookers

I don't think it would be hot enough to get a decent crust on bread, but you could still maybe do rolls, cakes, and pies, and possibly the sandwich bread recipe that has lots of butter and milk. The instructions in the book are for typical oven temperatures, so you'd need to allow more time too.

I made a video yesterday for the Kickstarter. Some guinea fowl made an appearance.

The Kickstarter is now ready to preview - cover images not what they will be, and the reward images are not ready, but the text is done (I think), please let me know if there are any errors, or if there's anything else I could add to make this really good.

I might put some quotes from recipe testers in it too.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katedownham/sourdough-without-fail?ref=8ow4dc&token=55a95884

Reward prices are only showing in Australian dollars at the moment I think - 1 AUD = around 65 us cents.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Still in favor of the original simple one photo front cover and what ever multi-photo you devise on the back🤷🏻‍♀️

Or, if it’s to be a multi photo front cover, could you make the loaf of bread large, and a row across the bottom of much smaller photos of the pancakes etc?

That is a good idea. I'll have a tinker around and see what I can come up with. It all depends on how much blank space is around the bread in the original photo.

I tinkered around with the fonts. These two are my favourites.
Phosphate solid/cinzel
Superclarendon/cinzel

Give this post a thumbs up if you like these ones more than the original font choices. Or reply if you have a particular favourite out of these two.

Right now I’m leaning towards the superclarendon (serif) version.

These are just from fonts that were already on my computer. I’m going to have a quick look around for other fonts in the next couple of days.

A little more tinkering with the colourful cover, in response to the feedback about baguettes and too many pictures.

Which one do you like more? (1st one has 50% rye in the top left corner (same as the earlier version), 2nd one has oat porridge bread in the top left)

I've made a poll to help choose the cover: https://permies.com/t/358038/Poll-Kate-choose-sourdough-book

Also changed a couple of things on the "notify me on launch" page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katedownham/sourdough-without-fail?ref=aulp1k

1 month to go before launch day now! It will be launching on October 7th, 3pm mountain time.

I think the laws would vary from place to place, and also from market to market. I used to sell bread at markets, some markets wouldn’t let me have a stall unless I had a government-inspected kitchen, other markets didn’t care.

Flour is such a low-risk thing to sell, it may not be something that regulators have considered. You could always sell the grain itself (at the same price you’d sell flour for), and then ask the customer “do you want me to grind this up for you for free?”, that way you are just selling the grain and then doing the customer a favour rather than selling flour directly.

Legal stuff confuses me though so maybe don’t listen to anything I say about it!