I pulled out my sourdough starter after months of it hiding in the back corner of my fridge. Sitting on top was a black liquid.
Surely, I figured, it was unusable.
I hadn't made a single loaf of bread before shoving the starter behind jars of pasta sauce, pickled red onions, and miscellaneous sauces. I was overwhelmed by the process.
How often do I feed the starter? How much should I feed it? What flour do I use? What temperature should the water be? Do I use tap or filtered? What is a stretch-and-fold?
The questions were endless, but about a year ago, I decided to give baking sourdough bread another chance.
Shockingly, the untouched starter was fine. The liquid, I learned, was hooch, an alcohol by-product indicating that my starter was hungry. Since there wasn't mold, I poured out the hooch and treated it like normal.
If I still had a starter after months in the fridge, maybe the entire process wasn't nearly as complicated as some make it out to be.
One year later, I stand by the idea that sourdough isn't all that serious.
I skip plenty of the steps and rules you read about online
I'll never forget the pandemic sourdough frenzy.
Across my friend group, everyone was diving headfirst into sourdough and treating it like their child.
Their starters had names and personalities with regular feeding schedules. When weekend trips popped up, my friends brought their starters to other friends' houses for babysitting. If a starter's meal was forgotten, it seemed like a do-or-die situation.
Now that I've been making sourdough for a year, I'm convinced my friends (and the internet) are far too dramatic.
If you keep your starter at room temperature, it's typically recommended to feed it daily. Most people who do this also bake daily, and I don't know many people who eat an entire loaf a day.
Meticulous regular feedings — what made a sourdough hobby feel unattainable — is no longer something I follow. Instead, I feed my sourdough starter only when I plan on using it. That sometimes means I'll go a few days between feedings — or a few weeks.
So far, my loaves have turned out just fine. If it's been a long time since I've used the starter, I'll feed it twice before baking to make sure it's doubling in size, bubbly, and active.
My relaxed approach to baking doesn't end there. Typically, a loaf of sourdough requires time management skills. You need to mix the dough, let it rest for an hour, stretch it, let it rest for 30 minutes, stretch it again, let it rest for another 30 minutes, and so on.
These periods of stretching and resting help the dough ferment, form gluten, and develop flavor.
I've learned that while these periods are important, timing them perfectly isn't. If I delay stretching and folding, a method to strengthen the dough, or wait too long to shape it, it's rarely unusable.
Sure, I may not have a flawless crumb, which refers to the loaf's interior, but I've always had tasty, edible bread.
When in doubt, make sourdough focaccia
My best advice as an unserious baker is if something goes wrong, just make sourdough focaccia.
If you leave your dough on the counter too long, throw it in a pan and make focaccia.
If the texture feels off, make focaccia.
One of the most common errors I've heard from friends is over-proofing or fermenting their dough for too long (which typically means you've left the dough out for too long). When this happens, the dough won't hold its shape and will probably have an excess number of large bubbles.
My tip is to go ahead and try to shape it into a loaf. If it falls flat and doesn't hold the round shape, turn your bad loaf of sourdough into a good loaf of focaccia.
Throw the dough in a pan, spread it out, cover it in olive oil and seasonings, dimple it, and bake.
It's hard for something covered in olive oil to taste bad.
Bakers will tell me I'm wrong, but this relaxed way has worked for me
There's still plenty to learn about the process. Since I've taken an unserious approach to making my bread, I haven't explored hydration, feeding rations, autolyse, or flour types.
I'm not saying my baking method yields the perfect sourdough loaf; it doesn't.
I'm simply saying that if you want to save money on groceries, know the ingredients you're putting into your body, and want a new hobby, don't rule out sourdough.
Yes, it's a time-consuming process, but I've learned over the past year that it doesn't have to be stressful.
