With the topic for my free inquiry nailed down, it’s time to get started on the research process.
Resources
There are one thousand and one resources, blogs, books out there that all share similar recipes and instructions when it comes to sourdough, but all with slight variations in ingredients and methods. How is a beginner supposed to choose what to follow?
After combing through website after website and browsing through physical books, I was able to come up with a few good starting points for this journey. Each of the following offers clear, step by step guides from creating your starter to baking a loaf. They also provide troubleshooting, options for variations, and a huge catalog of recipes to work your way up to (because the experimenting and learning is never done with fermentation!)
- The Perfect Loaf
- The Sourdough School
- The Sourdough School (book by Vanessa Kimbell)
- The Clever Carrot
I’m so thankful for the online resources being so easily accessible for free use. In all three of the websites above, it was mentioned by the author that the point of these blogs was idea of documenting and sharing what is a bit of a finicky process, trying to make it more doable and friendly for all.
My mission? To show that sourdough baking can be accessible to anyone, even you – Emilie (The Clever Carrot)
The questions
After looking through these resources, I was able to get a better understanding of how the entire process was going to look, which allowed me to narrow in on the questions I would like to tackle.
The first, and more broad of the questions I want to start out with is finding out what makes a happy starter. This is one of the biggest aspects I struggled with in my past sourdough attempts. Like any living thing, the microbes and bacteria in the sourdough culture are happiest under certain conditions. Even if the instructions of the recipe are followed exactly, these can vary based on a whole host of reasons (room temperature, altitude…). I predict this will be the toughest, but most important part of the process.
My next inquiry question is going to be looking into the differences in appearance and taste of two different starter types. This will be a handy and fun way to compare the exact same process for two different flours, and to see how each may have different preferences to the first question.
I’ve decided to use these two questions as my starting points, seeing where the sourdough journey takes me (or rather, us: my starters and I), and then developing deeper, further questions based on the results.
Now that I have a plan and a beginner’s knowledge, I’m ready to get started – time to make my starters!
-Megan B.