"I can follow a recipe and I've made yeast bread, but my loaves are dense. Three hours a week until the end of November."
BecameYour Weekend SourdoughShort guide · 5 chapters · starts with the starter, not with kneading
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Your Weekend SourdoughChapter 1
Chapter one
Meet your starter: what changes when you leave commercial yeast behind
You already know how to make bread. You've weighed flour, mixed a dough, waited for it to rise, and pulled a loaf out of the oven. That experience is a real head start, so we won't go back over kneading basics or what gluten does. Instead, this chapter focuses on the one thing that's genuinely new: the starter.
By the end of this chapter, you'll understand what's living in that jar, why it behaves differently from the packet yeast you're used to, and which simple controls you have over it. Once that clicks, the rest of the book will feel like a sequence of sensible steps instead of a mystery.
12Written for: beginner · 3 h/week · by end of November
What a starter actually is
A sourdough starter is just flour and water that you feed regularly until a stable community of microbes settles in. Two main groups do the work:
- Wild yeasts. These produce carbon dioxide gas, the same job your packet yeast does. They're what makes the dough rise.
- Lactic acid bacteria. These produce acids, mainly lactic acid and some acetic acid. The acids give sourdough its tang, a deeper flavour, and help the loaf keep a little longer check.
These two groups get along well. The acidic environment the bacteria create discourages many unwanted microbes, while the yeasts tolerate it happily. That partnership is what keeps a healthy starter stable for years.
Compare that with the packet of instant yeast you've used before. That packet holds a single, carefully selected yeast strain, grown to be fast and predictable…
Exercise 1 of 4 — You want to feed your starter at a 1:2:2 ratio using 40 g of starter. How much flour and water do you add, and is it still a 100% hydration starter? Answer at the back of the book.
13
From brief to book
Three briefs, three very different books.
"Some experience with colour mixing. I want to paint one calm lake scene I'd actually frame. Two hours a week."
BecameA Calm Lake in WatercolourShort guide · 5 chapters · one painting, built up layer by layer
"Complete beginner. Ordering food, asking directions and chatting with a host family in Rome by March."
BecameRome in SentencesShort guide · 5 chapters · built around the ten conversations you will actually have
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Your Weekend Sourdough
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TomeTrellisYour Weekend SourdoughFrom jar to family loaf
Short guide · Beginner, 3 h a week
TomeTrellisRome in SentencesItalian for ordering, asking and chatting
Short guide · Complete beginner
TomeTrellisPython for Spreadsheet PeopleFrom formulas to scripts
Full book · Knows Excel well
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Short guide · Some experience
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Full book · No finance background
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