For my 40th birthday, I didn’t want any gifts but I was pleasantly surprised to receive all the tools I needed to become a sourdough baker. I got a jar of sourdough culture from a friend and Emily bought me the essential tools, including a bench scraper, clay pot, and banneton.

Sourdough baking is a lot more complicated than I imagined. You have to weigh everything and take your time stretching out the dough and letting it rise. My first 3 attempts were edible but otherwise disasters – they were too dense and ugly to look at. I didn’t understand what steps I had to follow exactly and which I could approximate.

It wasn’t until I dilligently followed every step in Flourist’s detailed directions (with handy videos) that I started getting consistently airy and delicious loaves. I had to modify their recipe a little to work with my clay oven (most people use a dutch oven). I’ve found that baking my bread for 60 minutes in a soaked clay oven at 450 F without any pre-heating results in beautiful loaves that are browned but not too crusty.

I now get rave reviews from Astrid and her picky friends who ask for fresh slices whenever I bake a new loaf.

Baking bread is a 3 day process that I do once a week – the first night I feed my starter; the second day I mix the ingredients and stretch the dough and then let it rise; and on the 3rd day I bake the bread in the morning. One of the benefits of working from home is I can spend some time baking sourdough during my workday.

Now that I’ve mastered sourdough bread I’ve started making foccacia using this repice. It only takes 2 days and it’s delicious with olives and herbs.

More pictures of all my sourdough baking experiments.