emma_jones•15d agoProlific Poster

Vent: That $60 sourdough starter kit that turned into a science experiment from hell

I got it into my head last month that baking sourdough would be my chill weekend hobby. So I dropped $60 on this fancy kit with a crock, a lame, and a banneton basket. The starter took like 10 days of feeding it every 12 hours, and I killed it twice by forgetting on a Friday night. Then when I finally baked a loaf, it came out flat and hard enough to use as a doorstop. My kitchen still smells like fermented vinegar no matter how much I scrub. I feel like I just paid to stress myself out more than my actual job does. Has anyone else fallen for a hobby setup that cost way too much for zero payoff?

3 comments

3 Comments

pat_harris15d ago

Oh man, that sounds brutal. I mean, I get the appeal of sourdough, but that $60 kit seems like a huge markup for what you actually got. The vinegar smell is probably from the starter being overfermented or not getting enough oxygen, not the kit itself. For what its worth, you dont really need all that fancy gear anyway. A regular bowl and a clean dish towel work just fine for proofing, and you can score the bread with a sharp knife. So maybe the real cost was just learning the hard way that the hype is way bigger than the reality.

anna71715d ago

The $60 kit thing is funny to me. I spent like $5 on a bag of flour and a jar of tap water and my first sourdough loaf came out fine. Maybe a little dense but not vinegary or anything. @pat_harris, you're right that the gear is way overhyped, but I feel like people act like sourdough is this impossible science experiment. It's just bread. You mess up a few times and then you get it. No need to act like you were defrauded by a kit.

ward.diana15d ago

Wait, you got a good sourdough loaf on your first try with just flour and tap water? That's honestly kind of insane to me. Most people I know had to toss their first few starters and start over, so you must have some kind of lucky kitchen magic going on. But yeah, I guess that proves the point that you don't need to throw sixty bucks at a problem to figure it out.