The Art of Sourdough.

Foreword by Brandi.

Welcome to a new blog series! In this series, we have invited guests on the blog to talk about different topics and inspire us all in new ways! We are kicking off this blog series with a guest who has been a beloved supporter of Honey & Home since the very early days, Rachel Hough and she is talking all things sourdough. So, sit back & enjoy! I hope you love this new blog series!

XO ,

Brandi

Hi, my name is Rachel and I am obsessed with sourdough. Sourdough bread, sourdough cookies, sourdough pretzels, crackers...the list goes on and on. But first, let’s go back a few years -

You see, my Grandpa one day bought a bread machine then he perfected his recipe, knew it by heart. Didn’t even need to use measuring cups. He makes his own bread, bread for sandwiches, hamburger buns and rolls. Stopped buying bread from the grocery store. It was his routine, just like walking around his senior community every morning. He baked bread. When I would visit him, we baked bread.. I learned that Canada had the best flour and he would have his neighbors bring him flour when they would return to Florida from their summer in Canada.

Flash forward to January 2023, I was looking at his journals and came across his dough recipe. I spent days trying and failing to get it just right wishing I had paid a little more attention to when he would start the dough. Wishing I had that Canadian Flour.. Eventually I gave up, and I impulse a Dutch oven and started baking no knead bread, it was easy - I made it every weekend, ventured into making my own hamburger buns, hot dog buns, rolls and eventually focaccia bread. Then the craze of sourdough started to grow (no pun intended), and I thought I wouldn’t mind trying that. I read about it and thought, ratios, feedings, keeping it alive and got scared. I don’t have kids, I struggle at making sure I have enough protein to keep me from getting migraines, how could I grow and keep something else alive. So, I stayed with my no knead bread, and made it every weekend. Then I realized it was September and I had gone almost the whole year without ever buying sandwich bread. So I continued on and made it the whole year on homemade breads. 

December of that year came and my Mom asks, “what do you want for Christmas?” I didn’t know, but I started thinking about bread and sourdough.. I found myself saying “I want this sourdough starter kit from Amazon” I was going to give it a shot, was going to make 2024 another year of not buying bread. 

Christmas morning, I opened my presents, received my kit and thought this is it - I am going to make sourdough. Just to realize, all this kit had, was a glass jar, a spatula, and jar covers/lids. There were no real directions, nothing to tell me what I needed to do - then came the sourdough learning rabbit hole. I watched every TikTok there was, reading every article, recipe, Pinterest, Instagram everything. I had to figure out ratios (a word I hated growing up as I was never good at math and every time it was said in class I got a pit in my stomach because I thought the teacher was calling on me - Rachel or Ratio. Sounded the same to me) I just wanted to see if I could do it. Make a loaf, move on with my life..find something else to do. Boy was I wrong about what was to come. 

Starter, Ethel was born on 12/30/2023. – I looked to The Southern Sourdough on TikTok to help with this process.

My house is always cold, I was told “this won’t work your house is freezing” “it’s going to take forever for it to grow, you must turn on your heat” jokes on them, I didn’t turn up my heat (kept between 62-65) and roughly 10 days later. Ethel was thriving. Doubling even tripling in 4 hours. 

January 13, 2024 - I baked my first loaf and what a process it was. 

My recipe is quite basic, but long, there are tons out there but let me tell you – they are pretty much the same.

I highly recommend getting a food scale, it keeps things accurate. I really have noticed a difference with my baking once I started using a scale!

Something I wish someone would of told me is, timing is everything! I started my first loaf around 5pm.. and then was checking on it all night. Now I start the process in the morning. I feed the starter around 6-7am, so by 11am I am able to start the dough, stretch the dough, let it sit and then shape so I can go to bed with it in the fridge and deal with the baking the next morning (or afternoon if I get sidetracked) I also wish someone told me that if you are going to bake a loaf, you should just double it and bake two.. because what is better than one loaf?! TWO!!

I hope you enjoyed reading and maybe starting your own sourdough journey! I cant wait to see what you bake! As its not just bread, it can be crackers, cookies, pretzels.. the world is your sourdough and we are just baking it.

A special thanks to our girl Brandi at Honey and Home for letting me share my story letting me get outside my comfort zone, but for also being the biggest cheerleader to us all! You are a true inspiration to girls/women everywhere. Business owner, Author, and badass babe!

Follow along with Rachel and her sourdough journey here!