Yes! I'd been baking all my own bread for years but had repeatedly failed to cultivate a sourdough starter despite following lots of guides to the letter. I finally got mine living nicely when I completely let go, stopped measuring and worrying, just learned to smell and watch. I pour flour in straight from the bag and splash water from a big container, as long as the consistency is somewhere between thin mud and thick mud it can work (I think heavily chlorinated water makes it very difficult though). I have no fridge in summer and little-to-no heating in winter, my starter just sits on a shelf at various temperatures... if I don't use/feed it for a while it needs a couple of days of feeding to get busy again. Even when it's not very lively I still make dough, it just takes longer to rise (and the taste/sourness might vary). I've not bought commercial yeast for a year now, all my bread is sourdough. Flour, water, salt, those are all my bread contains...well, those and billions of tiny fungi and bacteria.
I feel like once flour was invented sourdough was inevitable. Adding water to ground up grain is an obvious move as it binds it and makes it easier to work with. At some point a flour/water mix is going to be left standing and start bubbling, and when cooked it's going to get magically bigger. Boom, bread.
I enjoyed the post, always glad to see anything bread related. Baking bread has been a huge positive thing in my life, I'll never stop now (I was even without an oven for a year and learned to bake bread in a cast iron pot on a gas burner/hob). It's a rich sensory experience with all the smells and textures, and working dough is very grounding and 'real'. Every loaf is different and it's great fun waiting to see what's going to come out of the oven. I'd massively recommend getting into bread!
Well done. I have the same issue. I have to weekly commute to another city. I have a really small apartment there with a super tiny oven. It's a challenge to bake, but that won't stop me. You can bake bread everywhere.
I would strongly recommend getting a digital kitchen scale (cost is under $30) and measuring water and flour in repeatable weights. A volume of flour is just not a consistent weight - it can be packed loose or tight.
That's very relevant for the bread-making process.
For starter feeding, though, I'm with the GP post: measuring all the time is a PIA, and totally unnecessary. The margin of error is massive, after a few measures you'll know the consistency to aim for, and if you're too stiff/wet it's dead simple to compensate when baking.
Feeding by texture lets you get to know your starter better, follow its rhythms, and makes daily feedings a very easy habit to maintain. We've been pulling this off for 5,000 years without a digital scale :)
I think one of the biggest culture divides in baking is the "I love baking, it is so scientific and exact" crowd versus the "Everything makes bread!" crowd.
I personally use the big measurements (flour, water, etc) as a rough guide so that I'm in the right ballpark on consistency and don't need to add too much one way or the other to get it right, and usually ignore the smaller measurements entirely (salt, baking soda, cinnamon, vanilla ...) and pour what looks like an appropriate amount in my hand before dumping it in the mix. Fewer dishes to wash that way :-)
> so that I'm in the right ballpark on consistency
You can get lack of consistency with an accurate scale, just always experiment, e.g. vary a weight. That way you know what you did also get _repeatability_ if you like the result.
Sourdough bread famously has only 4 ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast (starter). Though that's not the whole story, there is also seeds, and more than one kind of flour sometimes.
> pour what looks like an appropriate amount in my hand before dumping it in the mix. Fewer dishes to wash that way :-)
Measuring by weight is exactly the same, the mixing bowl is on the scale. pour in until the right weight is reached.
> For starter feeding, though, I'm with the GP post: measuring all the time is a PIA, and totally unnecessary.
If you use the same flour every time, and are aiming for the same consistency, then you will want roughly the same amount by weight of it each time. I get that you don't need to be that precise for the starter, but I don't find the weighing process at all hard.
I think it's a thing about how you like your life. Are you looking for an exact taste every time or do you want to be surprised now and then? What I have seen from Germans, they are very routine-bound and don't like it if it's out of sync. Swedes are a bit looser but still want the normal bland stuff, no exotic tastes. However this seems to change slowly thanks to lots of baking/cooking programs on the telly the last 30 years.
I feel like once flour was invented sourdough was inevitable. Adding water to ground up grain is an obvious move as it binds it and makes it easier to work with. At some point a flour/water mix is going to be left standing and start bubbling, and when cooked it's going to get magically bigger. Boom, bread.
I enjoyed the post, always glad to see anything bread related. Baking bread has been a huge positive thing in my life, I'll never stop now (I was even without an oven for a year and learned to bake bread in a cast iron pot on a gas burner/hob). It's a rich sensory experience with all the smells and textures, and working dough is very grounding and 'real'. Every loaf is different and it's great fun waiting to see what's going to come out of the oven. I'd massively recommend getting into bread!