My dad used to call this time between the holidays and January “The time between the years” when one year was over and the next one hadn’t really started yet.
This time is ideal for reflection and thinking about the future. It is also a time to take a breath and focus on some self care and I hope you have an opportunity to do that before 2025 hits us in the face with new storms and challenges.
Any year with it’s 365+ days has the potential for ups and downs, successes and challenges. 2024 had a lot of highlights for me and some setbacks that caused me to pivot and adjust my views.
A year ago I decided to combine my passions for teaching and sourdough baking into one and launched my website Sourdough.Guide. Building a website from scratch has a lot of parallels to sourdough baking. Especially because things take longer and you learn a lot along the way. Like with most of my baking experiments, seeing the website grow and morph into something I and many others like and return to was very rewarding. Late in 2024 I started my newsletter and if you are reading this in your email, thank you for learning with me!
As I said, I took this time between the years to look back at the sourdough guide accomplishments:
- Over 100 loaves of bread baked
- Eleven recipes developed and published
- Five “Fundamentals” posts added to the website
- First “Bake with me” session to support local apple growers
- Connected with many home bakers and professionals on social media
For this year, I am looking forward to some great plans, and I hope that most of them will work out:
- The first in-person Traditional Skills – Sourdough course is scheduled for January 25th and a second one is already in the planning stages
- I want to develop some higher hydration recipes like baguette and crusty buns
- My friend Han and I want to develop sourdough steam buns, combining our respective heritages
- Sending out the monthly newsletter to more and more home bakers
- Building a useful FAQ page on the website
