The past couple of weeks have been tough. I received a comment on one of my social media posts that they were “bored with my products.” OUCH! I’m not exactly sure how I could entertain this person with candles but clearly my candles are not singing and dancing enough.

That comment got in my head. I grabbed a cup of coffee and went down the Instagram rabbit hole, researching (stalking) other candle companies and found a ton of lovely looking candles, some copycats but I hadn’t found a single dancing candle. I found candles that have money in them or jewelry and a ton of fire hazards. I was getting myself all worked up to the point my home blood pressure monitor clocked me at 133/113. I had to stop doomscrolling.

Then…and I don’t know how…I found SourdoughTok. I put the thought of my boring candles out of my mind and became instantly obsessed with making the perfect sourdough loaf. I have officially watched every sourdough TikTok, Reel and now belong to two different sourdough Facebook groups. I’ve learned new terms like Discard, Float Test and Hooch. I learned that the fancy way to say a ‘round’ loaf of bread is a BOULE. Did you know that a perfect sourdough has a belly and ears? I’d never heard of a banneton before, but now I own two. I own a special whisk because who uses a fork? Peasants, that’s who. I also have a fancy razor blade with a wood handle for cutting decorative marks on my bread before baking.

PS, I was able to find a whole damn kit on amazon for $49 so if this turns out a disaster, I am still way better off than I have been with my other ADHD impulsive craft supply buys. I don’t even want to get into the supply costs when I discovered the Cricut!

Two weeks ago I mixed some flour and water in a mason jar to create my Starter from scratch. I thought to myself how difficult could this really be? All I had to do was remove some every day and feed it more flour and water. As far as recipes go, this was the easiest thing out there. I am here to tell you starter takes on a life of its own. I named my girl Doughlene. She is a hungry bitch but very even tempered, I could barely get a rise out of her, no matter what I adjusted. She has spent time all over my house trying to find the perfect temperature for her, I’ve fed her AP Flour (that’s ALL Purpose for anyone not currently in their psycho sourdough era), given her a taste of wheat which she gobbled up, but then went flat and finally threw a Rye Flour Hail Mary until that bitch eventually bubbled and doubled.

I told Joe making a SD starter was way more difficult than starting or even running a business. I even had a dream a couple nights ago that Doughlene 100Xd herself and my entire kitchen was coated in fermenting ooze. So here we are, Friday October 27, 2023 and I am finally making my first loaf.

She is doing her first rise right now- that will take 2 hours. Then I have to refrigerate her for 4 hours before performing doughagami with a complicated series of twists and folds. If you don’t know what I am talking about, look up sourdough forming on TikTok. There are about 75 million (slightly dramatic number) different techniques, but I think I can manage the candy cane method. Maybe. We will see.

This will be a two-part blog as I would like to take you along on my first loaf or wait, BOULE bread journey.

PS: Did you know that ovens have a Proofing setting? I didn’t. I learned that from the Sourdough Geeks Facebook group. The more you know! *Insert rainbow hands*

Stay Tuned Misfits!

-Lacie