Happy butterflies filled my chest when a close colleague gifted me the most beautiful loaf of sourdough. It was a work of art, beautifully flecked with white flour dust in swirls. An actual artisan creation. Everyone loves to feel special, and being gifted homemade bread makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I know sourdough bread making isn’t a quick bake. It takes hours for the sourdough starter to activate after being fed, and the iterative process of folding the dough as it rises requires consistent attention. And someone else did all this work for me. I still can remember how amazing it felt to cradle a loaf of still-warm, freshly baked bread in my hands – and how delicious it was to devour. And now I love to give that gift to friends.

Since then, I’ve started making sourdough bread at home (with starter from my bread friend!). It’s wild how two simple ingredients (flour and water) make such a tasty treat. And once my loaves began looking less like a bread explosion (this happens when you don’t score the bread right) and more like a work of art, I felt comfortable giving them to people as gifts. No one needs to eat an entire loaf of sourdough bread every week, although if you gave me enough softened salted butter, I could. And sourdough starter is at its best when it’s used often.

Most Friday nights, I take my glass Mason jar of starter out of the fridge (where it lives during the week) and let it come to room temperature before feeding it fresh, warm water and a few scoops of flour. After I leave it sit for a few hours, the starter gets all excited. That’s the best way I can describe it. The jar of sticky dough fills with air pockets (actually, it’s carbon dioxide), proof of wild yeast activity fermenting away at the flour. Once it’s bubbly, I mix it with even more water, flour, and a little bit of salt, weighed precisely on my kitchen scale. Then I pray my house is just the right temperature for the bread to rise, keeping an eye on it and folding several times in a few hours. I like to let my dough sit overnight in the fridge to develop a tangier flavor, making it easier to prepare for the baking dish. The next morning, I pull it out of the bowl, roll it around on a floured surface, score it deeply with a razor blade and bake that baby until it’s crusty brown. This is a true labor of love. And once you’ve done it a few times, it’s not that big of a deal. And it fills the house with this warm, wonderful smell.

I don’t have any special equipment to make bread. I use my metal mixing bowls and a heavy-duty spatula. I reason that if I don’t have to invest in anything more than a bag of King Arthur flour, I can make as much bread as I want! My brother recently gifted me a specialty cast-iron enameled Dutch oven for baking bread (thanks, Zach!). And it makes bread just like my other heavy-duty Dutch oven, so this is a reminder to myself that while those fancy bread baskets may look nice, I don’t need anything more than what I have.

I try to do little acts of kindness every day. Sometimes that’s smiling at a stranger as I pass by or mailing a hand-painted card to a long-distance friend. On other days, it might involve leaving a little extra tip on a small meal for the server at the local restaurant or stocking up the Little Free Library with new books. But nothing beats gifting a warm loaf of homemade sourdough bread to someone. If I had more time, I would bake more bread.

If you’re up for it, try this King Arthur recipe for a no-knead sourdough bread. You won’t regret it.