Ever feel like you are trying to keep up with the Joneses?
If you’re like me, then you’ve probably seen and enjoyed content from glamorous women all across the internet who are skilled at feeding their family entirely from their home garden, while caring for their chickens, and making freshly baked sourdough bread each week that’s just as beautiful as their homes they showcase online. What if you’re also like me and are a homemaker who doesn’t do any of those things? Homemaking without sourdough is possible! Let me show you how.
I have nothing against the aforementioned type of homemaking and enjoy that type of online content as much as the next girl, but sometimes it makes me feel like I’m failing the homemaking game even when I’m not.
One day I vividly remember having the urge to make fresh bread for my family. I kept seeing beautifully baked loaves on social media and thought it’d be fun. I also wanted to help out financially by saving money at the grocery store. Our bills were getting high, and baking bread seemed like a feasible thing I could do to cut costs over time.
Excited for my new venture I set out to find a bread recipe that looked like it would give me beautiful quality bread like all the loaves I’d been drooling over on social media.
I quickly became discouraged and started feeling bad about myself as if I were failing my family when I began my recipe search. Every single recipe for homemade bread was sourdough-based.
Fighting the Algorithm
Very quickly I discovered that the algorithm made it nearly impossible to find a bread recipe that wasn’t sourdough based. Even going to some of my favorite influencers’ blogs brought me the same results.
Had everyone forgotten how to bake non-sourdough bread? Were all other types of bread incredibly bad for you in comparison? What was going on and what was the obsession?!
Sourdough – The Good and the Bad
Don’t get me wrong, I think sourdough bread can be wonderful. It offers a lot of benefits that yeast-based breads don’t necessarily have, such as ease of digestion, and can help your blood sugar levels. If you have certain sensitivities this may allow you to eat bread when you struggle to eat other types; however, this may not always be the case for everyone. Sourdough is also a little more complicated, at least at the start to get going versus yeast breads.
Sourdough may appeal to many, but it can have some drawbacks. For one, it has a distinct flavor that some do not enjoy. In fact, I have known several people who cannot stand the taste of sourdough bread. I have also met several people who are not able to eat fermented foods. This can be a sensitivity for some people which means while eating sourdough helps with gluten sensitivities for some for others sourdough would negatively affect them.
Sometimes, just eating certain foods like bread whether yeast or sourdough in moderation is the best thing to do for overall health even when it comes to balancing blood sugar levels and reaping other health benefits.
The Struggle with Sourdough
The other downside to sourdough is getting the starter itself going. Once the starter is done it doesn’t take too much effort but getting that starter going and complete is a commitment that I just haven’t had the opportunity to add to my to-do list in the last few years. A sourdough starter can also be temperamental, and let’s just say that was a concern for me for a while.
When my husband and I first got married we moved to our property we live on now, but at the time our current home had not been built yet. We lived in an existing cabin on the property that was a little less than 500 square feet and it had no modern amenities including central air conditioning and heat.
You can imagine, living in Texas, we had a pretty humid home despite freestanding A/C units and dehumidifiers throughout our house. I still felt like a sourdough starter would not fare well in our home. Shortly after moving, we found out that our second child who I was pregnant with at the time possibly had a disorder so it was a stressful and high risk pregnancy never availing time or concern for things like a sourdough starter.
The Verdict on Sourdough For Me?
It really has not been until now that I have had an opportunity to start a sourdough starter and honestly, now that I have the possible time and ideal setting I’m in no rush. Sure, maybe one day I’ll try my hand at a sourdough starter but I have bigger projects I’m focused on now and no health or dietary needs for me or my family driving me to start one sooner.
In fact, I’ve created my own yeast bread recipe that I make often for my family and we greatly enjoy it. If you’re interested you can find the recipe here. I feel good being able to make and serve a healthier alternative to store-bought bread sourdough or not.
The Moral of the Story
The moral of the story isn’t about bread though. It is about the ease of invasive thoughts and how they can tear us down before we even realize what is happening.
I once heard someone say that you know you are a homemaker when you start making sourdough bread. It’s the first step to leading to getting the chickens, and next the garden.
Joking or not, this can make homemakers who go against the grain feel like they are doing something wrong when in reality they are doing the best they can for the specific needs of their family. There is no right or wrong here as long as you are meeting the needs of your household.
So What’s a Girl To Do?
Don’t have chickens? No big deal. Don’t have a garden? That’s fine too. No flowing dresses with gingham or beautiful floral patterns on rotation? Me either!
Would I love to have some of these things? Maybe on occasion, the pretty dresses would be fun and I think it is in our plans to have chickens and a garden but only in moderation. My husband and I know our limitations. With full-time jobs, kids, and the busyness of just day-to-day life and all the duties that come with general homemaking we don’t have the help or the overhead for anything too extravagant or big but having enough to survive if we need to is our goal. Plus, it’s nice having control over how our food is grown and processed.
At the end of the day if making yeast bread and keeping your home clean while putting food on the table and caring for the kiddos in cowboy boots and blue jeans is what you’re doing then you are doing homemaking perfectly – just the way you need. And if making artisan sourdough bread in a gingham dress and collecting fresh chicken eggs while tending your garden is your thing then you are doing it just right too. Or maybe, you fall somewhere in between, and that too is excellent homemaking!
Happy homemaking to all my fellow homemakers out there no matter your style!
