My sourdough saga 🍞🍞🍞

Today I want to share with you my story of baking with sourdough. I call it saga, since it was quite a long process of learning, trying and making mistakes to finally come up to regular and quite successful baking.

First, a little bit of sourdough history. What is sourdough in fact ? Sourdough is a natural leavening agent that has been known since ancient times. In reality, it is a simple mixture of flour and water that begins to ferment with the help of microorganisms present in the surrounding environment and in the flour itself. Lactic acid bacteria break down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars, which are fed by yeast fungi. This produces carbon dioxide, which is trapped in the gluten network and causes the dough to rise. It is a much slower process than with industrial yeast. This makes the bread easier to digest and has more nutrients and minerals available to the body.

There is evidence that sourdough was made by the ancient Egyptians, and from them the culture spread to the ancient Greeks and later the Romans. And from there, until today's writing 😋

I first met sourdough bread in a few restaurants and bakeries. Actually, it was not easy to find it in “my milieu”. And at that time, I’ve never thought about baking it myself, but it turned out that my inner me was already thinking about it 🙄.

During the lockdown I had time to read some blogs, books and I’ve started my own research. The process looked complicated, but I was ready 💪.
The first step was of course the sourdough starter. I’ve read that you have to give it a name, which was a little bit silly for me, but when my family members heard about this, they were ready to jump in and that is how our sourdough starter got the name “Zivko” which can be translated in lively. Now I know why you have to give it a name, I feel like we have a pet at home, since I have to feed it regularly, check if it is ok and when we go for holidays, I have to ask my mum to look after it 🤣.

Different blogs and tutorials scared me a little bit, because many were complaining that they repeated the process many times before their starter came to life. I was lucky, since I’ve succeeded in the first attempt.
But I was still at the beginning. The first bread was almost a disaster, it was quite flat and there was only one big hole in the middle. There was no sign of fluffy and tender core and crunchy crust….. The second one was a little bit better but still faaaaaar away from the proper bread.

But slowly I’ve improved with trying different techniques, making also mistakes, but I think that I’ve achieved what I wanted. Still, it happens that something goes wrong, and the bread is not perfect, but the taste is always amazing!