'Make your failure bread again!' my kids shouted with delight, tearing into what I'd deemed a structureless, flat disaster of a sourdough loaf. In their eyes, my kitchen mishap was what they mysteriously deemed “Star Wars bread”—perfectly imperfect and meant for dipping in olive oil. This moment may capture who I am as a baker now, but it took two distinct timelines of baking sourdough to get here.
That first version began over a decade ago, when I decided to bake bread--only sourdough. I never once considered starting with instant yeast or quick breads. In my mind, the ethics of eating seasonally intersected perfectly with naturally leavened breads and other fermented products. Plus I was in Portland--back in 2012, it was the place for this kind of food--both cooking it but also building an entire culture and travel industry around it. Courtesy of Portlandia, "we can pickle that" and I was all in, taking deep dives with Sandor Katz, trying everything from basic sauerkraut to beet kvass, shopping at a since-shuttered store called the Homesteading Supply Co. I had visions of backyard chicken keeping and almost hosted a beehive for a honey maker. We ripped out all the grass in our front yard for a series of pollinator-friendly flowers and perennials; we put in 8 raised beds in our backyard. I was in deep.
Certain things didn't stick--I still have my sauerkraut crock but haven't made any ferments in a while. Beet kvass was not for me and I never got around to chickens or bees. But something that did stick around, in a roundabout route, was sourdough bread.
But to back up a bit. The Portland ethos of make your own, grow your own, seasonal eating always--some of that was true and some of it was a fantastic advertising campaign, fluffed up by excellent brand agencies. In reality, there were just a few people dabbling in sourdough in Portland proper when we lived there (Several notes here: I mean ”commercially”, not home bakers. And, I will mention that there seem to be a few newer-to-the-scene bakers in Portland since we lived there). Sarah Minnick was making and continues to make exclusively sourdough pizza, sourcing seasonal and local ingredients for all the pizza toppings. She very much deserves the recent accolades she's received. Tabor Bread--now under new ownership--was proud to be an exclusively sourdough bakery.
But the heart of sourdough bread culture was in San Francisco--and maybe it still is. And that's where I focused my education. I read and took copious notes all throughout Tartine. I baked through some of Josey Baker's book. I took 'field trips' to each of their bakeries many times. And all along, I was baking, alternating Robertson's techniques with local Portland baker/businessman Ken Forkish. I still recommend Forkish's book to people looking to start sourdough baking. Forkish's recipes are accessible--your starter build becomes LARGE enough to make 6-8 loaves. Between Forkish and Robertson, I was able to start to learn the nuance of starter making, leaven building, and what constitutes a decent loaf--from rise to crumb.
The failures were epic--flat loaves, gummy interiors. But when I got it right, even if the loaf was not super complex, it made me want to immediately start another leaven and get going again: it was that addictive. Our house smelling like fresh baked bread was obviously another perk.
After getting the hang of things, I started a small Community Supported Bakery for my loaves--churning out 3 at a time from my home oven. And before I gave birth to my oldest son Hugh, I was donating loaves to a food shelf and housing authority in Portland.
And then I had Hugh and I put it all on pause. At first, this was a source of stress for me. As anyone who has had babies, especially first babies, knows, you experience a mix of utter joy and a confusing sprinkle of loss and anxiety. I will dedicate my entire life and time to this precious baby. That's a given. But wait...what about the other stuff? Will I ever run again? Preserve again? Bake again? Do anything that I used to do? The answer on that varies parent to parent. For me, it meant...no. Not exactly. After a few months of fighting the reality of things, I understood that I wouldn't be returning to bread baking anytime soon. There was no way I could logistically manage all of Hugh's wake ups and his epically long naps (on me) and somehow get loaves in and out when they were ready.
The reality of a sourdough starter and sourdough baking is that it's another thing to take care of...not like a child, but perhaps like a cat. It needs to be fed, you need to pay attention to timing, you have to specifically care for it once or twice a day. And before children, when I only had a cat (or two, but that's a different story), I was able to baby and care for my starter (giving him the name “Twombley”) and obsess over my bread.
Last year, I decided to start baking bread again. My youngest, Abe, was old enough for his nighttime sleep to be mostly predictable and I felt pushed to dive back in. My shelved sourdough baker identity began to re-emerge. But it didn't come back out in the same way--I returned to baking as a gentler, happier, more fun version of my previous baker self. Before children, a failed loaf was intimately linked to my own self-worth. Having people buy my bread was incredibly important to me. I treated reading bread blogs and analyzing results not unlike how one approaches marathon training.
This happier version of my sourdough baker identity still gets it wrong. But now I have my children to lighten things up. I stretched myself with a recipe recently--one that I needed to pay attention to more than I had time for--I rushed it and winged it...and guess what? It came out flat and structureless. "Ugly," I declared with a laugh. "Oh well." "Ohhh we love it, Mom! It looks like Star Wars bread!" I had called it 'failure bread' and they eagerly yelled “make your failure bread again!“ And we ripped off pieces and dipped them into olive oil and thus my errors and mishaps transformed into sweet family memories.
Errors can be made into family memories, but so can really good looking and tasting loaves of bread. That's because my base of sourdough bread baking allows me to rely on intuition--I know what a well-risen loaf looks like. I know when my starter is ready or not. I now pick bread recipes based on two factors: will Abe eat it (he's my number one bread consumer) and am I totally sick of a classic country sourdough? On one week I tend to bake a Robertson or Tatton country style loaf and another week, I'll bake a whole wheat seeded or porridge bread.
The biggest transformation, however, is how much I love baking with sourdough discard. I think I always scraped it into the compost bin in Portland...but here in Vermont, no way. I've remarked that I enjoy discard baking nearly as much as bread baking--and on the weeks that I can't squeeze in making bread--I can always bake something with my discard.
It was actually this morning's batch of sourdough discard biscuits that got me thinking about how far I've come as a baker. These biscuits represent everything about Version 2 of my sourdough journey—they're adaptable, I make them with pleasure, and I truly enjoy keeping my discard out of the compost bin. While I grew up in the South, I never quite developed a great love for biscuits. But these? These are different. They're vegan (from my recipe adaptations), fluffy, filling, just the right amount of salty. They pair equally well with jam or for Hugh, eggs. They can be made with some of your starter and a few basic ingredients, ready in 25 minutes for breakfast, any day.
A simple biscuit, pancake or waffle feels like an edible symbol of finding possibility in every part of the sourdough maintenance and baking process. Perhaps that's the biggest lesson of Version 2: there's always room for growth, always another way to transform what we have into something delicious.
If I have to pause this version of sourdough Meaghin because life is unpredictable, I have a feeling I'll think back on “version 2 sourdough” as a time of flexible adaptability and enjoyment. I continue to feel driven to do more: make more rye loaves, really push the limits on fermentation, mill my own flour, and shape more batards instead of boules. Who knows--I could be 80 years old and writing about version #10 of my sourdough journey. But for now, I'm firmly in #2 and I'm sincerely loving it.
Sourdough Discard Biscuits
Recipe Adapted from ”The Perfect Loaf”
Ingredients:
113 g of vegan butter
227 g of a mix of flour (all purpose and whole wheat, for example)
20 g baking powder
5 g sea salt
140 g buttermilk (I measure 135 g of oat milk and 5 g of apple cider vinegar)
75 g sourdough starter (discard is fine)
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 425 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut the cold butter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture.
Using your hands or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour, until the butter is the size of small peas.
Add the 75 g of sourdough starter to the measuring cup or bowl containing the buttermilk. Gently mix together.
Add the starter-buttermilk mixture to the flour and butter mixture. Stir with a spatula until just combined--avoid overmixing!
Use a cookie scoop or 1/4 cup measuring cup, make 8 mounds of dough on the prepared baking sheet.
Bake for 20-25 minutes (it's closer to 20 in my oven) until tops are golden brown. Serve warm and enjoy!