Sourdough bread has been a beautiful hobby of mine since fall of last year. I began by researching how to make my own sourdough starter, my sister in law joined the journey which made it even more exciting.

This process was long, and it took me several tries before I found a starter recipe that worked for me. While I felt like giving up on the hobby when I would run to my kitchen in the morning and find that very little, if any, of the starter had risen overnight— I stuck with it.

Today I am so grateful that I kept going in those hard moments of feeling like I had failed at making my own bread.

Today, my sourdough starter has grown so much that I needed to upgrade to a larger container to sustain it, a need I didn’t ever think I would have last fall, when I was failing.

Today I ritually make a delicious cinnamon raisin loaf every Saturday morning and my family wakes up to the smell of a cozy baked breakfast. 

Recently, my mom visited and tried some of the loaves I had been experimenting with. My mom has made traditional yeast bread since I can remember, and she inquired as to why I went the sourdough route. In the moment I pointed out a few of the reasons I preferred this method— sourdough has proven easier digestibility, the scoring of the bread is an art and I love that I can feed my starter and see it rise! 

Since that question— I have pondered harder. Starting the sourdough journey was a decision I made during one of the most challenging seasons my family has endured. 

We had moved to a rental to pursue the career opportunity of a lifetime for my husband. I was so happy for him, but unsure of where our path forward was for a place to call home.

We had left Kansas City, a place we loved, and a home we had built after just 18 months. Now we weren’t sure where our roots would settle. This unknowing felt like we had made the wrong call moving at all. 

I needed something to focus my energy into that wasn’t things out of my control. Things that I needed to let God work on and take my mind off of. Sourdough gave me that, it gave me a routine and something that needed me to tend to it, and if I didn’t, it wouldn’t survive— and since I’ve never been a natural green thumb person, the sourdough thriving felt like I major win! 

The truth is, there is something about putting my hands into dough that is calming.

Baking has always been a place I can be where my thoughts have to settle so I can focus on the ingredients and bringing a delicious something to life.  

Baking bread requires my hands and fingers to get messy, caked in dough and kneading the ingredients into a ball that will bloom overnight. 

A good friend said “Bread reminds me that Jesus is the bread of life” ——words that could not be more accurate.

✨Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.✨—John 6:35

This reminds me that Jesus sees us a perfectly in motion—-process. Just as sourdough bread needs time for the gluten to rest, 8-10 hours to rise— and an hour and a half to bake… We need time in our seasons of life. 

I’ve spent many years racing toward the next thing, so much so that this blog was once called “ chasing down emotion”, except, I didn’t allow myself the time to know what I was chasing. If I’m being honest, I am just now beginning to learn the art of process and rest. Bread has taught me to slow down, and to give myself the grace and space to process. Once allowed to, something beautiful comes forth. 

The art of Bread is that it tells a story. Each time, you can see in the cracks and folds how the baker kneaded and shaped the loaf. The same is true for us, we all tell a story and when we give ourselves the space to process— our cracks are mended and our maker shapes us into all that we are called to be. 

So take a deep breath friend, and know that you are perfectly in motion, no matter what stage of process you’re in.