Sourdough
I hopped on the sourdough train back in the late 2010s. You could say I started baking sourdough before it was pandemic-popular, but not long enough beforehand to lend me any extra credibility. I am still just a hacker trying to make delicious and nutritious bread for me and my family.
I hope you find the knowledge here easy to digest, and I hope you feel encouraged to try baking your own bread.
Tools
- Kitchen Scale
- Bench Knife
- Measuring Cup
- Big Bowl
- Dough Whisk
Nutrition
I first started baking sourdough because I love the way it tastes, but I recently started to learn that sourdough can be really good for us humans as a part of our diet. Studies have shown that natural dough fermentation has a lot of great benefits for our gut microbiomes.
Invaluable Resources
- Books
- Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day - The authors of these books taught me that you can play with the scheduling of your bread baking as long as you know the ground rules. These books are great if you’re interested in using commercial yeast to get your rise. Especially if you need to fit bread baking into a busy schedule.
- Websites
- The Perfect Loaf - Maurizio is a fellow software engineer-turned-baker. His detailed beginner recipes are both approachable and highly detailed. His site gave me the confidence to attempt this hobby. I attribute my foundational bread baking knowledge to his site.
- The Sourdough School - Vanessa Kimbell has some great introductory information here. The greatest resource at “The Sourdough School” though is the research library, which is a collection of published scientific articles about sourdough, nutrition, and the gut biome. There’s some seriously interesting stuff in there if you have the time.