Eric Rusch

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and for as long as I can remember, the city’s iconic sourdough bread, with its crispy crust; airy, springy crumb; and unique sour tang has been an important source of dietary delight. My parents would take us out to dinner and I’d be totally full (and happy) from eating table bread before the meal ever came. Later on, when I went off to college, the seeds of what has become my life’s work were sown when I was gifted some sourdough starter by a friend’s grandmother. This directly led to the core dietary staple of mine and my college buddies’ lives: sourdough waffles. Many a night I would mix up the ingredients (milk, flour, salt, and starter) for the next day’s batter, then leave it to ferment until the next morning when the ritual of alternately making waffles (in three separate waffle irons plugged into the same outlet) and running to flip the circuit breaker when the power shut off would ensue for as long as the batter lasted. College boys can eat a lot of waffles. Thus began a lifelong obsession with baking at home using natural (“wild”) yeast, also known as sourdough starter, as both a leavening agent and core ingredient. And over the years (then decades) of baking sourdough bread at home, I found myself constantly telling friends who praised my bread as the best they’d ever had how easy it was to make it. Nobody believed me because everyone knew how time-consuming, difficult, and complicated baking bread was; especially sourdough bread. Finally, in 2006, I started my website, Breadtopia.com, to present tutorials in both written and video form showing people just how easy and straightforward it can be to bake incredibly delicious, artisan-style sourdough bread at home with just a few ingredients, a really nominal amount of equipment, and no more than a few minutes of work. Trust me, I’m not a trained French chef; I’m just a guy who loves fresh sourdough bread. If I can bake it at home in my kitchen, you can do the same in yours. I’m really excited to show you how easy it is.