Baking is not something that comes natural for me. (Cooking is where I tend to shine.) This never stopped me from trying to make something fantastic, and I’ve always wanted to try my hand at a natural sourdough bread. Being homebound for the past several weeks has given me the perfect opportunity to do so.

Starting from scratch, I mixed flour and water at a 1:1 ratio and set it on our counter in a glass jar. Over several days of feeding it, a wonderful bubbly starter was born. Following the directions for How To Make Sourdough Bread — instructions I somewhat randomly picked — it called for a mere Tablespoon of the sourdough starter to create the leaven and then I was off to the races. Multiple days of “the races” I should add.

Creating this sort of sourdough bread is a time commitment I can’t say I would recommend. Don’t get me wrong: the result is amazing when successful, and I was lucky enough to have been successful. It just wasn’t worth the effort. Instead, I would recommend using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day approach (which I have used many times over the past several years).

Having had the experience of making the sourdough bread from scratch was worth my time.