Hot take: my aunt called my sourdough 'cake' at Thanksgiving and it made me rethink everything about my starter

Betty Wells · 2026-09-25T18:55:05.49445+00:00

Three years ago I started baking bread on weekends and I was pretty proud of what I was pulling out of the oven. Then at Thanksgiving my aunt, who ran a small bakery in Ohio for two decades, took one bite of my loaf and said, 'This is cake, honey. Where's the chew?' I was annoyed for about a week, but then I started actually reading about what was happening with my starter. I was feeding it once a week and keeping it in the fridge, so it never got strong enough to lift the dough without help. I started feeding it twice a day for five days before baking and stopped adding a pinch of sugar to the dough, which I had been doing because the bread tasted flat. Six bakes later the crumb finally had that pull and tang I was chasing. My aunt was blunt but she was totally correct, and I still text her pictures of every loaf. Does anyone else here keep a starter going, and how often do you feed the thing?

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Hot take: my aunt called my sourdough 'cake' at Thanksgiving and it made me rethink everything about my starter | Changing My Mind - Thought Shares