🧺🌿Small Beginnings🌿🧺

I truly didn’t start my bread journey until a little over a year ago. I was making small rolls for family get togethers and holidays, or I’d attempt a brioche bread, (which is crazy in retrospect since that’s like the hardest bread 😭) but nothing as time consuming as sourdough.

I spent way too much time driving around looking for sourdough starter that I could buy to start practicing. I went to Safeway and my local bakery but they seemed confused why I was asking and never had any for sale. Then I started watching Claire Saffitz and her baking channel. She became pretty much my online mentor that I would follow along with her recipes on YouTube, or use her cookbook Dessert Person. Now I’ve been watching her since the Test Kitchen days, but seeing her in a more comforting setting really gave me a lot of inspiration. I religiously watched her sourdough episodes, over and over. I studied the science (and I hate science lol) and the time spent on the bread. And I decided to start my own sourdough starter.

That’s when Esmerelda was born. She is my little science experiment and I obsessed over her every day. However, it certainly took me a few attempts before I had anything worthy of calling a starter.

My first attempt broke my heart….i made the very smart choice of leaving her on my windowsill... where she fell off and shattered on the floor. 💔 My second attempt was from a friends starter, and my first time refrigerating the starter I panicked and thought the water on top was moldy, so I poured it away. I then did research and realized it wasn’t mold and then I just threw away a perfectly good starter. 🙃 Finally, I started it completely from scratch. I kept her in a plastic tub. I monitored it. I had a sharpie pen drawing lines. I had my husband monitoring it. It was about a month before I had a fully developed starter completely from scratch. 😁 So I named her Esmeralda and from then on, I have been taking care of her for about a solid 10 months. I am very proud of her and her progress, and she has made some of the most delicious loaves of bread that I have ever tasted.

The first few loaves were a struggle and not the best...however, these small beginnings are all a part of the journey ahead!

✨The Sourdough Bread Witch✨