In April 2012 I lost a very close friend, Caroline, to a vicious and rare form of cancer. It changed my life and my outlook completely. As a result I chose to close my previous business and to be at home full time, looking after my family; I then decided to teach myself to make my favourite foods from scratch, at the same time starting a food blog “—˜foodbod” to chart and log my dishes and my learning. What I had not expected was to become part of a wonderful new community; blog world is a lovely, supportive, sharing world, where you make virtual friends all over the globe, sharing and learning from one another.
My food is vegetarian, healthy, tasty food, with lots of Middle Eastern influences, as well as other cuisines, using lots of spices and fresh vegetables and grains, and appealed to lots of other people cooking in their homes, and the discussion and inspiration was daily.
One of our blog family, Celia, in Australia, had started baking sourdough using her starter, Priscilla. She decided to dry out some of her starter and send it round the world to her blog friends, including a lovely lady in London called, Selma, who I was friends with online, and in person, after ‘meeting’ on our blogs. Selma named her starter Twinkle and promptly mastered sourdough baking – she was an amazing cook and baker. Selma dried some of her Twinkle and sent her with full instructions to many of her blog friends, including me. This was in early 2013.
I had mastered baking bread with commercial dried yeast, but sourdough was totally new to me. I had never heard of it before the ladies had started to blog about it, let alone eaten it, so I had no idea about it at all. I will be honest, I was scared!!! I did not know anything about making sourdough, so I bombarded Selma with questions which she happily answered (the sourdough community is a passionate, sharing bunch), and then I went for it, and it worked like a dream.
It was like MAGIC! I revived the starter, and baked what I considered to be a beautiful perfect loaf, I was so proud it! And I promptly ate half of it in one go right there and then, it was so good!
My son has always been a bread fanatic and he loved it too, and from then on requested sourdough on a regular basis, I therefore got to the point where I needed sourdough available for his breakfast and school lunch every day. I did what everyone does and read lots of information, played with various methods, baked a few frisbees and a few bricks, and learned constantly. I made several different starters during this time and eventually mixed them all together with my original starter and created a single mega starter: my Star.
Eventually from everything I had seen and read and tried, I settled on my own process that ensured that I could produce 3-4 consistent successful loaves week in week out.
I shared my bakes on my blog and my instagram account, but not really referring to any particular process, always referring people back to Selma and her blog. Until during this time, lovely Selma also sadly died, again too soon and again from cancer.
In summer 2018 I was still baking regularly and joined some Facebook sourdough groups. It quickly became apparent that I was doing things differently from a lot of other bakers.
So many sourdough methods, and books, and instructions render sourdough seemingly inaccessible or scary or impossible to make for new sourdough bakers, full of unknown terminology and steps I didn’t use. I knew that it did not have to be that way. I had a process that was simple, straightforward, fits in with life, does not dominate the household, does not dictate your life, and can be made by everyone. And at the same time Star just got, and gets, stronger and stronger, she almost defies belief.
So in summer 2018 I decided to share what is now known as my master recipe, with my process and all of my hints and tips on a freely accessible website. I just wanted to share what I do in my home kitchen in the hope it might be useful for someone else, and also to demystify sourdough and undo the over complicated reputation it has gained. At the same time I started selling my dried starter to help people on their journey. I had no big plan, just to share and chat, as I’d done on my blog for so long.
I launched the site on 26th July 2018. The first order came on the same day from a lady in Texas, the second came the next day from Indonesia! I was amazed, it was not what I had expected at all. My starter has now travelled to every corner of the globe and my recipe is being used everywhere you can think of. I teach courses in my home kitchen and help people daily via social media. I receive messages hourly from people thanking me for simplifying sourdough and helping them to bake successful loaves, they send me photos of their lovely loaves and share their excitement at the simplicity of the process.
People around the world are now enjoying their own freshly baked, healthy, tasty sourdough in their homes on a regular basis using my process, it’s amazing. And I love it. I love the photos of their creations and seeing videos of their starters, and hearing how happy they are. I’m so grateful to everyone who has used my recipes and processes and for all of your wonderful messages and feedback.
And now amazingly I have a book coming! As a direct result of my website and everything I share and post on social media, I was contacted by a publisher at the end of last summer, and my book will now be published this Autumn. The book will contain lots of great information, and lots of new recipes, but the key to it, and everything I do, is to show that sourdough can be made simply and happily in any home kitchen.
As far as I’m concerned, there are no rules where sourdough is concerned. It is not defined by looks, or holes, or a process, if you have made homemade healthy tasty bread using a wild yeast starter, is it sourdough. I love everything about it. It’s a wonderfully slow mindful process that refuses to be rushed, a perfect antidote to our fast paced world. It’s the oldest form of risen bread, centuries old, and the healthiest form of bread. It’s a joy to make and create and, of course, to eat.
Its a wonderful fulfilling thing, and the joy in sharing this sourdough world of mine is immense, I still can’t believe I get to do this daily!