Why I Wrote a Sourdough Book for Australian Kitchens

It took me two years to learn to bake sourdough properly.

Not two years to make a loaf. I made a loaf fairly early. Two years to stop guessing, to work out why a recipe that behaved one way in one kitchen fell apart in mine, and to get to the point where I could pull good bread out of the oven in the middle of a Kalgoorlie February without it being luck.

Two years is ridiculous. It should not take anyone that long.

That is why I wrote the book. It is the thing I wish someone had put in my hands at the start.

What took so long

Every recipe I followed was written by someone in a mild kitchen.

They were not wrong. They were just answering a question I was not asking. They would tell me to bulk ferment for five or six hours, and in their kitchen that was true. In mine, five hours was a puddle.

Nobody had written it down for the conditions I was actually standing in. So I worked it out the slow way, one failed loaf at a time, until eventually I understood what my own kitchen was doing and why.

The book is that, minus the two years.

Where it came from

It did not start as a book. It started as workshop materials.

When I began running sourdough workshops, I had to think properly about what I would tell a room full of women who had never done this. Not what a textbook would say. What actually matters, in what order, and what I wish I had known standing in my own kitchen with a flat loaf and no idea what I had done wrong.

The workshops were the thing that forced me to organise it. And then there were all the women who could not get to one, because they were four hours away, or had no one to mind the kids, or the timing never worked. Which out here is most women.

So I put it in a book instead.

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What is in it

Ten chapters, and the order matters.

How sourdough actually works, in plain language, so you understand what you are doing rather than following steps blindly.

How to make a starter from scratch, from nothing but flour and water. You do not need to buy one or be given a heritage culture. Wild yeast is already in your flour.

How to keep it alive, including through a 35 degree kitchen, and how to read what it is telling you.

The temperature chapter, which is the biggest one in the book, because it is the thing that trips everyone up. Dough temperature in, target rise and timing out.

How to read your dough. The signs of ready, the signs of underproofed, the signs of overproofed, and which one to err towards while you are learning.

The base recipe, the one I teach in workshops.

Eight flavour variations, with actual quantities. Chocolate chip, jalapeno and cheddar with honey, feta and olive, rosemary and olive oil, cinnamon and raisin, seeded, wholemeal, honey and walnut.

A troubleshooting chapter that goes through the six ways a loaf goes wrong, what each one means, and what to change next time.

And an honest equipment list, which tells you what you actually need and what you can skip. Nothing in this book calls for an ingredient you cannot get in a regional supermarket.

The printable fridge card comes with it, so if you buy the book you do not need to buy the card separately.

Who it is not for

I would rather tell you now than take your money.

If you live somewhere cold, this is not your book. It is built around heat. There is cold weather guidance in there, but the whole thing is designed for kitchens that run hot and dry, because that is where I live and that is who I am writing for. Someone in Hobart would be better served elsewhere.

If you want a recipe you can follow without thinking, this is not it either. Sourdough does not work that way, and any book that promises otherwise is selling you something. This book teaches you to read your own dough, because that is the only thing that actually works across different kitchens and seasons.

And if failure puts you off, do not bother. I mean that kindly. You will produce bad loaves. Everyone does. The whole skill is being able to look at a flat loaf, work out what happened, and change one thing next time. If that sounds like a slog rather than a puzzle, sourdough is going to make you miserable and I would rather you spent the money on something you will enjoy.

Who it is for

Someone who has had a few goes, had a few failures, and wants to understand why instead of trying another recipe and hoping.

Someone in a hot kitchen a long way from anywhere, who is tired of paying more every month for bread that goes stale in a day.

Someone willing to learn.

The actual reason

Underneath all of it, this is what I want.

I want women out here able to make their own bread. Not dependent on what the supermarket has on the shelf, or what it costs this week, or whether the truck came in. Able to feed their families something they made themselves, from flour and water and salt, in their own kitchen, in their own conditions.

That is worth more than a loaf of bread. It is one less thing you are at the mercy of.

Everything I know about doing that out here is in the book.

Easy Sourdough for Australian Kitchens, $16.50