Have you ever thought about making your own bread at home? My family of four loves sourdough bread; however, I always find myself disappointed with the options at the grocery store. I recently decided to learn more about how to make sourdough at home and now I’m making delicious, better-for-you bread at home every week for myself, my husband and, most importantly, my kids.
If you’re interested in making sourdough at home, you must first have a sourdough starter. A starter is made up of flour and water which creates the beautiful wild yeast that help your bread rise and give it that tangy sourdough flavor we all know and (hopefully) love!
Here are a couple of ways to get your hands on a starter:
- Snag some from a friend. There are so many people with active, bubbly sourdough starters at home who would be happy to share. Text your friends or join your local Buy Nothing Project group to ask a neighbor.
- Buy your starter. With the recent sourdough trend on social media, you can easily find some dehydrated starter that comes with instructions on how to revive it. Ask your local bakery or have some shipped to your door from King Arthur Baking Company.
- Make your own. If you have unbleached flour and filtered water, you can make your own starter. Your starter will need daily maintenance for about 2 weeks before it will be ready to bake bread. After that, it becomes less work to maintain—I promise! This is the route I chose and I personally found the instructions and video published by Natasha’s Baking very helpful!
Once you have a starter that is thriving, you can use it to bake bread! Try this Beginner’s Sourdough Bread recipe from Farmhouse on Boone. You can go for an artisan style loaf baked in a Dutch oven or throw it in a bread pan for an easy sandwich loaf.
Once you’ve mastered plain sourdough bread you can start adding in inclusions (think cinnamon raisin bread—yum!) or use it to make bagels, pancakes, muffins, cookies, etc. There are endless things you can create for you, your family and friends!