Chapter 2: Where My Yeast Journey Began

"Sometimes life quietly places a challenge in front of you. You can either walk away... or accept it."*

Like many people around the world, I first heard about sourdough during the COVID-19 lockdown.

It fascinated me.

Not because it had suddenly become fashionable, but because I wanted to understand one simple mystery.

How could nothing more than flour and water become a living bread culture?

The more I read, the more curious I became.

At that time, I was managing a wonderful Facebook community where many experienced sourdough bakers were already members.

Instead of pretending that I knew everything, I did what felt natural.

I invited those experienced bakers to teach all of us.

I imagined how wonderful it would be if everyone in our community could learn together.

Not just how to bake sourdough bread, but how nature quietly transforms a simple mixture of flour and water into a living culture capable of raising bread.

Some people appreciated the idea.

Some showed interest.

But when it came time to begin, something always came up.

One person became busy.

Another had other commitments.

Some simply stopped responding.

Days passed.

The workshop never happened.

I waited.

But while I was waiting, something else was happening.

Late at night, I found myself reading articles, watching videos, and trying to understand sourdough on my own.

One evening, I finally asked myself a question that quietly changed the direction of my life.

If nobody else is going to teach us... why don't I learn it myself?

Looking back today, I am actually grateful that nobody accepted my invitation.

Had someone else taught that workshop, perhaps the curiosity inside me would never have grown the way it did.

Sometimes life closes one door only to quietly push us towards another.

That unanswered invitation became my biggest opportunity.

I wasn't trying to become a sourdough expert.

I simply wanted to learn.

So I began reading.

Watching.

Observing.

Making mistakes.

Starting again.

Every bubble inside that jar felt like a tiny victory.

Every mistake became another lesson.

I wasn't simply learning to bake bread.

I was beginning to understand fermentation itself.

Little did I know that this one decision would eventually take me far beyond sourdough.

Years later, it would lead me back to my childhood, where my mother would help me rediscover my nani's traditional khamir.

It would inspire three homemade yeast powder methods, fruit water fermentation and many other experiments that now fill the pages of this handbook.

The Starter That Disappeared

My very first sourdough starter wasn't made in my own home.

At that time, I was living in Odisha with my in-laws.

For ten days, I looked after that tiny glass jar like it was something precious.

Every morning I checked it.

Fed it.

Watched it.

Waited for it to grow stronger.

Every evening I looked again.

Slowly, the bubbles increased.

The aroma changed.

The starter became stronger every day.

After ten days of patience, it finally became a healthy bread yeast.

I still remember how excited I felt.

Then one day...

It disappeared.

My mother-in-law had cleaned the refrigerator and thrown it away.

For a moment, I couldn't believe what had happened.

Ten days of careful feeding...

Gone.

I felt heartbroken.

But this wasn't anyone's fault.

My mother-in-law belongs to a generation that deeply respects food.

She has always believed that not even a handful of flour should be wasted.

To her, that bubbling jar looked like spoiled flour.

She had no idea that I had spent ten days carefully growing a natural bread culture.

She wasn't destroying my experiment.

She was protecting what she believed should never be wasted. I alone know how I discarded starter every day else it might have become sour. It was a challenge since I was at my in-law's home, where nothing goes waste. Making a starter that requires discarding flour every day might not have been received well by my mother in law. But I secretly emptied the discard in the compost bin I had without the knowledge of my husband's mother.

Today, when I look back at that incident, I don't remember disappointment.

I remember love.

Love for food.

Love for simplicity.

Love for never wasting what nature provides.

And perhaps that lesson became just as important as the sourdough itself.

Starting Again

For a day or two, I felt discouraged.

Anyone who has spent days feeding a sourdough starter will understand that feeling.

You don't simply lose flour and water.

You lose time.

Patience.

Excitement.

Hope.

But fermentation quietly taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life.

Sometimes you don't lose an experiment.

You simply begin another one.

So I started again.

This time, I documented everything.

Every feeding.

Every rise.

Every mistake.

Every success.

And when my second starter became healthy and active, I made another decision that changed my journey forever.

Instead of keeping everything to myself, I invited people to learn alongside me.

I started a free live sourdough workshop on YouTube and Facebook.

Every day we met.

Every day we fed our starters together.

Every day we observed what nature was doing.

Many people successfully made sourdough for the very first time.

Some struggled.

Some became worried because their starter looked different from mine.

Others wondered why their starter wasn't bubbling.

I answered hundreds of questions.

And in doing so, I learnt something far more valuable than sourdough.

No two kitchens are ever the same.

Some homes are warmer.

Some are cooler.

Some starters double overnight.

Others take several days.

Nature follows its own timetable.

Not ours.

From that day onwards, I stopped teaching people to watch the clock.

Instead, I taught them to watch their starter.

That simple change made fermentation much less frightening.

Yet one problem remained.

Many people succeeded in making sourdough.

But maintaining it became another challenge.

Some forgot to feed it.

Some travelled.

Some baked only occasionally.

Others became tired of feeding and discarding week after week.

I shared every storage method I knew.

I showed how a mature starter could be fed weekly. It needs to be fed and discarded and stored immedately in the fridge. When you are ready to bake, remove from the fridge. Let it come to room temperature, rise fully, and you are ready to use it for bking. However, do a taste test. If it is sour, you may have to feed it fresh and discard the rest.

Then you can feed it every ten to fifteen days in the fridge - discard and feed and refrigerate.

I even shared my own freezer experiment, where I stored my sourdough starter for nearly five months while I was away. When I returned, I patiently revived it and watched it come back to life.

The experiment worked beautifully.

But despite all these methods, many people still wanted something even simpler.

They wanted natural yeast...

Without the responsibility of maintaining a starter.

I understood exactly how they felt.

And without realising it...

Those questions were quietly leading me back to my nani's kitchen.

The answer had been waiting there all along.