Do you bake bread as often as you would like? What are your biggest breadmaking roadblocks?

Gina Capri wrote: But if anyone has tips about making a warm enough place to raise the dough, I’d maybe try at least baking cinnamon rolls- my daughter loves them. Or French bread/baguettes- we do eat those about weekly.

Deedee Dezso wrote:

Nina Surya wrote:I occasionally bake bread, but would love to get to the rhythm of baking sourdough bread. The trouble there is that I don't have a starter.
I've tried to start a starter a couple of times, but failed.
I also got a starter once from someone, but it didn't do anything - at all, ever. So I'm assuming the starter was dead. I did feed it, but nothing happened.

Hi Deedee,

Ah, yes! I will keep that in mind when the grapes etc. are temptingly dangling in our garden again.
Until now I've only used the wild yeasts for brewing alcoholic concoctions, but they would work just as well for sourdough I presume... thanks for the tip!

For now I think the advices I found in this thread are gifting me two sourdough starters, one water-based, the other youghurt-y based. The first days of gentle bubbles looked promising :D
For me the trick was to make the starter thicker than before, and to make sure it's cozy and warm.

Gina Capri wrote:
But if anyone has tips about making a warm enough place to raise the dough, I’d maybe try at least baking cinnamon rolls- my daughter loves them. Or French bread/baguettes- we do eat those about weekly.

Tereza Okava wrote:i think you're doing well to address the "overanalysis" aspect that has permeated sourdough/baking culture (and beermaking). Reading some of the things out there I might feel like if I can't use one specific percentage protein flour and maintain at perfect temp X I cannot make bread (and my 88-year old mother in law would laugh and laugh). Especially when you're in places where you can't (or won't) get specific italian 00 flour on Amazon, for example, it can feel hopeless.

I realize this is not something you can do anything about, but the reason I stopped making sourdough was the skyrocketing price of cooking gas-- it was no longer feasible. I don't have space for a rocket oven here in my urban setting, but a few years ago I got myself an air fryer oven, which (wouldn't you know) turns out to make really good sourdough. I revived my starter recently to get back into the groove. Maybe consider encouraging people to try other baking options? In the meantime, most of the bread we have been making was steamed (Chinese buns) or cooked in a plan (turkish flatbread, etc), and occasionally even in the rice cooker.

Rio Rose wrote:Hi Kate! Cheese and now sourdough, hooray and thank you!

I've been doing the sourdough bread dance every week for several years now, but still have much to learn. My goal was always to be able to bake like my ancestors, without a scale, without analyzing hydration, just by my hands in the dough. But first I had to learn the  basics. I delved deep into recipes and forums and measured every last particle to the gram like the experts said you must. For years. Technical and intimidating, both.

Once I started getting comfortable with that process, I wanted whole grain that I milled at home, not the shelf-stable stuff on grocery shelves. Fresh-milled flours perform quite differently, and 100% whole grain is harder to make lofty. My loaves went from wondrous to wonky.

Every layer of this process that I uncover, there is another beneath. I am only just getting to a place where I can make a delicious intuitive whole grain bread (no measuring of flour, starter, water or salt). Though I have yet to make a whole grain loaf that rises to the heavens like that sifted shelf stuff.

Still - years later, the number one hardest thing is the timing of it all, and fitting that into a life chock full of other demands. Now that I'm using fresh-milled flours, I am soaking them anywhere from 4-12 hours prior to adding starter. It makes a difference, but is an added time constraint that takes my bakes to three days of process.
Even without the soaking, it's a long haul, the timing of which is dictated by your wee sour-inducing beasties, not you.

How then, to not be held hostage by your bread baking schedule? My dream sourdough baking book would contain tips and tricks for just that.

As an example - and this is something I've never read in any book or forum, but I recently learned (out of necessity, as midnight came and went) it's possible to retard (refrigerate) your dough during bulk ferment instead of the traditional final proof, if your life blows up and you can't keep waiting on it. The bread that emerged from this reverse process, was excellent. That was a freeing lesson!

In hindsight I think it is so much more important to have a good understanding of the science and why bakers do all those technical moves, the secret lives of yeast and bacteria. That good understanding will allow us novice bakers to pivot, explore, make it more of a creative process than simply following another’s route.

You’ve nailed all my issues - the perfection and analysis paralysis is real too. But I’d tell my early baking self that sourdough is like the rest of life, you can’t let fear of messing up stop you. And I would never have believed this in the beginning, but I’ve eaten every single one of my failed lumpy brick-like loaves, and loved them. Eat your failure! You might be surprised at how delicious it is. It’s fun, too. I look forward to reading your work!

Tanya White wrote:One more thing maybe off-topic: I would love to find a sourdough bread recipe that works with my oval romertopf clay baker with glazed bottom (it should not be preheated empty).

Josh Hoffman wrote:I think with our household, it may be more related to the quantity of things needed, or in other words, scale. It seems that most books we read are about a single guy or an older couple or some variation in between. One or two people to consider. A lot of time, larger numbers of people are not addressed and if they are, it is more along the lines of a community. Our kids are 8YO down to incubating so they do help out but not like an adult can.

Shannon Sell wrote:I use fresh milled flour. Most recipes online and in cookbooks use all purpose store bought sifted flour. I've not had much luck translating recipes. If I had good recipes or at least some working knowledge about how to use freshly milled... What I need to do to get a good loaf.. How to knead a sticky mess.. When to use flour or oil.. Those things might be helpful.

I need one master fresh milled recipe that can be bread rolls, burger buns, and a sandwich loaf. If I add a bit extra honey it can be a sweet bread recipe. I also need tortillas that will fold and not rip, English muffins that are cragly, biscuits and bagels that can pull apart instead of crumble to bits..  The flavor and nutrition are there along with the long term storage of whole grains. But it doesn't perform well for what I have in mind for them... so I keep going back to store bought.

So far I have mastered a sourdough recipe. I make once a week. Either 4 or 6 boules. I mix it in the morning. Slow ferment over the day and stretch/fold to develop gluten, at night shape and keep them covered in the fridge, pulling them out to bake as needed. I've kept them in the fridge for as much as 5 days with no problems. I keep the starter in the fridge too so I don't have to feed it all the time.

Deedee Dezso wrote:

Can you get your hands on a bunch of organic,  unwashed grapes? The white film on the skins is a wild yeast you can capture by mixing distilled water and flour to a thin slurry, and drop the grapes in for a few days. As with an older starter, when it bubbles and smells yeasty, remove the grapes and continue feeding as normal.

Juniper berries also carry this wild yeast. I've used the grapes I grew, but never tried the juniper.

Kate Downham wrote:
I’ve never heard of baking in an air fryer before. Would you be interested in testing some of my recipes out in yours?

Darci Larsen wrote:
I’m new to this place and this, this here, is why I’m so happy I found y’all. I have NEVER heard this anywhere else, I can’t wait to try it out this summer.

That’s good that you mention scale. I’ve been scaling down my recipes for the book so that they will fit smaller households than mine, but I still want a book that me and my kids can look at and make the amounts that we’re used to making rather than having to do maths as we bake, so I was trying to figure out how to have larger batch options in there as well - this will be something I’ll tacking in the designing phase.

Darci Larsen wrote:

Deedee Dezso wrote:

Can you get your hands on a bunch of organic,  unwashed grapes? The white film on the skins is a wild yeast you can capture by mixing distilled water and flour to a thin slurry, and drop the grapes in for a few days. As with an older starter, when it bubbles and smells yeasty, remove the grapes and continue feeding as normal.

Juniper berries also carry this wild yeast. I've used the grapes I grew, but never tried the juniper.

I’m new to this place and this, this here, is why I’m so happy I found y’all. I have NEVER heard this anywhere else, I can’t wait to try it out this summer.

Derek Thille wrote: That said, our adult daughter made 4 sourdough loaves one day recently...it's helpful that a cooler on the back porch these days is extra freezer space

Anna Hutchins wrote:I actually made (not at all authentic) naan yesterday.


I very rarely make normal loaves of bread because of time and just convenience.  When an okay, whole grain loaf of sandwich bread costs $2.5, that's only what, 10 minutes of my time at work?  Verses hours to make it at home.  I know that's not very self sufficient but that's the calculation right now.

Molly Kay wrote:
I'd love to try sourdough, but I'd get busy and no one else would remember to feed the starter, and it would either die or mutate and take over the kitchen.