Well, I have just spent the last few days working on the migration of a bunch of old blog content and… I apologize. if you clicked on this expecting a more “bready” opening paragraph, well, sorry. Nerdy things beget nerdy things, and sourdough bread and blogging are both pretty nerdy things walking hand-in-hand through this house.

My blog archives are stuffed to the rafters with foodie content.

That was even more evident when I realized that I had accumulated over thirty posts on the subject of sourdough while I was writing the Cast Iron Guy blog a few years back.

My starter, the same starter I pulled out of the fridge today in what has become part of my regular routine of warming it up to start the bread-making process later this evening, turned six last month.

No cheating. No fudging. No malarky. It’s legitimately six years old.

And I’ve not gone longer than three weeks without making bread (and even that was just the once because we toddled off to Europe for a summer vacation in 2023 and of course I wasn’t baking bread!)

As I moved and cleaned up all those old sourdough posts, tho, it struck me that compared to the early days of my baking I have not been nearly as experimental as I was back in 2021 through 2023. The last couple of years, in fact, have seen but a single innovation in my loaf approach and that is the acquisition of a large covered Emile Henri loaf pan (not cast iron!) which has become my exclusive go to bread baking vessel.

Shape and pan aside, I used to experiment a lot more.

I dabbled in flours.

I attempted hydration with beer.

I tried sweet breads and savoury loaves.

Lately, tho? White bread, sandwich loaf style, ready for my breakfast toast with butter and strawberry jam. Simple, staple, and kinda boring… at least in as much as it makes for interesting blog posts.

So I guess if you came here looking for sourdough ideas you should know that there are quite a few scattered through the archives of this site, neatly filed under “sourdough” … but you should also know that while I’ve stopped writing as the Cast Iron Guy, I am still quite a bit of a nerdy sourdough bread guy. (I’m making a batch tonight!) And I will be looking for, thinking about, and scheming up interesting ways to expand that thirty posts to a much longer list as this updated blogging effort continues.