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!
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!