By Chef Bill Walker– Culinary Arts Instructor, East Providence High School

I spent four years at Johnson & Wales University back in the 1980s—four years of stainless-steel labs, white paper hats, and the unmistakable perfume of hollandaise and croissants at 7 a.m. And while I can still julienne a carrot in record time and make fresh pasta like it’s second nature, there’s one thing I can’t recall doing once during my culinary school years:

Making sourdough.

Maybe someone demoed a starter in a lecture I overslept after a late-night shift at my part-time job at Greggs. Maybe there was a passing mention of wild yeast between laminated doughs and quick breads, but if you asked me in 1987 how to make a sourdough starter, I would’ve been unable.

Fast-forward thirty-something years, to the spring of 2020—when every human being with a mixing bowl and an internet connection suddenly transformed into Escoffier or Careme. I was quarantined like everyone else, staring at my empty calendar and the four walls of my kitchen.

Social media was exploding with people proudly announcing their “day 5 starter,” their “first levain,” their “quarantine loaf glow-up.” I figured—how hard could sourdough be?

The answer: Harder than my first three loaves, all of which could’ve doubled as cutting boards

However, as someone who prides himself on teaching culinary arts to teenagers—some of the most skeptical and observant humans on the planet—I couldn’t let a jar of flour and water beat me. So the journey began.

Quarantine Lessons: Bubbling Failure, Fermentation, and a New Respect for Wild Yeast

My first attempt at a starter looked promising on day one, questionable on day two, and smelled like old socks by day three. I hadn’t yet learned the delicate balance between feeding, discarding, oxygen, and temperature. But something about that struggling little jar intrigued me.

For the first time in my culinary journey, I wasn’t just following a recipe—I was observing, experimenting, luring life out of simple ingredients.

When the bubbles finally appeared—tiny, timid, but real—it felt like I’d unlocked some ancient secret. And in many ways, I had. Sourdough isn’t just bread. It’s humanity’s oldest culinary partnership with microorganisms.

Thousands of years ago, long before anyone uttered the word “microbiome,” bakers were cultivating fermenting mixtures called barm—the frothy residue collected from brewing beer. That barm was packed with wild yeast and bacteria, acting as the precursor to our modern sourdough starter.

And why had sourdough suddenly become the food emblem of resilience during quarantine?

Because it requires patience. Time. Attention. Because you can’t rush it, even during a time when the world tried to rush back to “normal.” And maybe because nurturing a starter felt like nurturing a tiny loaf of hope. It’s a living reminder that great things grow slowly, quietly, and with care.

There is something magical about cooking something that has been made the same way for hundreds or thousands of years. I get the same feeling when I make chicken stock or hollandaise sauce, a butter and egg yolk emulsion most commonly associated with Eggs Benedict. I get the warm fuzzies out of doing the same thing with the same ingredients in the same order as all of the chefs before me have done. It is some sort of unspoken connection to the chefs and cooks who came before me, taught me or worked alongside me.

Indeed, as chefs, we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

From Quarantine Kitchen to Classroom: Bringing Sourdough to Teenagers

Earlier in the year, a student asked if we could learn to make sourdough in class. The wheels started turning in my head. Sourdough as a phenomenon has kind of come and gone, which is ironic as it has been around for more than 5,000 years.

I found it gratifying that I could offer my students the same lessons about sourdough, but also about patience, time, attention, and nurturing something (starter) that could create a wonderful magical loaf of bread over and over again.

In order to properly teach any subject I feel that I really need to become knowledgeable about it. I started researching sourdough and once I started reading about the history, I fell down a rabbit hole deeper than the scoring on a loaf of honey oatmeal sourdough.

I learned the following:
● Sourdough predates commercial yeast by millennia.
● Gold miners and settlers carried starters like prized possessions.
● Every region’s microflora creates unique flavor fingerprints.

How had I gone all these years as a culinary professional without truly understanding this?

I brought my five-year old starter from home, which I had named “Malter.” My Aunt Sylvia has a fifty-plus year old starter that she brought with her in a jar on the airplane when she moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1973. Her starter is named “Bubbles.”

I set my quarantine starter on the demonstration table. A few students leaned forward, eyebrows raised. One asked if the jar was “alive or just gross.” Another whispered, “That looks like the blob from Stranger Things.”

I began, opening the lid with the confidence of someone who’d survived worse—like parent-teacher night. I explained that sourdough starter is a living culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. It is older than commercial yeast, older than the city of East Providence, older than basically anything you’ve eaten before. And just like that, they were hooked.

We talked about yeast, wild versus commercial.
We talked about fermentation, and why patience couldn’t be skipped or faked.
We talked about barm, about ancient brewing practices, about the continuity between past and present.

Then came their favorite term: proofing.

Proofing, I told them, is when the dough rests and rises—where the yeast produces carbon dioxide and the gluten stretches like a slow expansion balloon. It’s also the part where students gather around bowls as if watching nature documentaries in real time.

The Hands-On Part: Flour Everywhere, Questions Everywhere

Teenagers have a rare ability to turn a simple mixing session into a flour-based snowstorm. But they also have a remarkable way of engaging with processes that feel real, tactile, and alive.

Watching them stretch and fold dough was a thing of beauty. Some handled the dough like it was a fragile animal. Others attacked it with the confidence of someone kneading out algebra-induced stress.

We also made our own starter, but we made a ten times batch (Pictured below after about ninety days. They name the starter “Jenn” a tip of the chef hat to our technical assistant Jenn who recently left us at EPHS to go work in a Michelin Starred restaurant in NYC. The students love and miss Jenn, as do I, so I love that the students are inadvertently incorporating their own history into their sourdough. It all seems very “coming full-circle” or something. Other suggested names included “Yeast Mode”, “Doughbama” and “Carl,” because, she said, “Carl seems like a name for something that burps a lot.”

They learned to recognize signs of a happy starter: bubbles across the surface, a warm, fruity, slightly tangy aroma. predictable doubling, elasticity and structure.

But the biggest lesson was this:
Bread teaches patience. Students teach resilience. Sourdough teaches both.

Sourdough’s Resurgence: Not Just a Trend, but a Return

As we baked for two solid weeks, I told them the story of sourdough’s recent comeback.

Before 2020, sourdough was already creeping into the spotlight—farm-to-table restaurants championing it, artisan bakers reviving old methods. But during quarantine, it became something else entirely.

It became a ritual, it became a routine, it became a companion.
A project that required time when all we suddenly had was… time.

People longed for something ancient, slow, grounding, something that didn’t involve screens or algorithms. Sourdough was all of that. It was reliable, even when nothing else was. It rose, even when everything felt like it was falling.

And now, in my classroom, it was rising again—literally and figuratively.

Bake Day: Where It All Comes Together

Nothing compares to a room full of teenagers pulling their first sourdough loaves from the oven. The crusts popped and crackled as they cooled—a sound bakers affectionately call “the sourdough song.”

One student held her loaf and said, “Wow… I actually made this.”
One student held up her loaf like a newborn Simba.
Another sliced his open and gasped, “I have holes! Like… real bread holes!”

That day, the classroom didn’t feel like school. It felt like a bakery. A community. A place where something old had become new again, and where teenagers discovered they could coax life from flour and water.

That moment—right there—is why I teach.

Food empowers. Creating something from nothing empowers even more. Creating something alive? That changes you.

We tasted the loaves warm, tearing off pieces, analyzing flavor, crumb, tang. Some loaves were gorgeous. Others… had “personality.” But they were all accomplishments.

Looking Back, Moving Forward

I sometimes think about how strange it is that I left culinary school without ever practicing sourdough. But maybe that was meant to be. Maybe I had to live a lot more life—raise a family, run kitchens, teach teenagers, survive a pandemic—before I could appreciate what sourdough truly represents.

It isn’t just bread.
It’s history.
It’s science.
It’s intuition.
It’s patience.
It’s failure and triumph in one bowl.

It’s a reminder that the best culinary lessons don’t always come from university labs or textbooks. Sometimes they come from a quarantine afternoon, a jar of bubbling starter, and the determination not to let a microscopic ecosystem defeat you.

Teaching sourdough changed my relationship with bread—and with teaching. It reminded me that the best lessons aren’t the ones where I know everything in advance. They’re the ones where I’m learning right alongside the students.

Bread is humble, but the act of making can be profound. It requires trust, observation, and a willingness to let go of complete control. Qualities, I’ve learned, that also make a good teacher.

And sometimes, if you’re lucky, they come full circle—rising again in the hands of your students.

Here’s your step-by-step recipe:

Honey Oatmeal Sourdough

Ingredients

1/2 cup sourdough starter
1/3 cup honey
1 1/4 cups + 2 Tablespoons warm water
1 cup rolled oats, plus more for rolling
3 1/2 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons salt

Method of Preparation

In a large mixing bowl, add active sourdough starter, honey and water. Mix with a dough whisk or your hand until it looks like a golden, milky liquid.

Add the bread flour, rolled oats, and salt. Be sure to mix until all of the flour is incorporated. The dough will look wet and sticky, not like a uniform dough ball.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes before you move on to the next step.

Stretch and Folds

● With slightly wet fingers, scrape a piece of the dough away from the bowl. Grab a section of the dough and stretch the bread dough above your bowl. Then fold over on top of the dough.
● Rotate your bowl clockwise a quarter of the way and repeat identical stretch and fold. Repeat the process until you come full circle, about 4-6 times. You will notice the dough will start to look much smoother than before.
● Cover the dough again and let it rest for another 30 minutes.
● Repeat the same stretch and folds for a total of 4 rounds with at least 30 minutes of rest in between each set. Cover the dough after each round of stretch and folds.
● Once you have completed the final set of stretch and folds, cover the dough and let it rest for the remainder of the bulk fermentation on your counter, about 7-9 more hours if the dough is kept at room temperature.

Bulk Fermentation

Now this is the most variable part of sourdough. There isn’t a set time for your bulk ferment. It is greatly dependent on the temperature of your environment and ingredients. The warmer it is, the faster your dough will ferment. The opposite is true for cooler temperatures.

In an environment of 70 degrees, doughs will typically bulk ferment for 7-9 more hours after the stretch and folds, but again, you will have to look for the signs that your dough is done fermenting, rather than the clock. Warmer temperatures will be faster, while cooler temperatures will be slower.

Here’s what to look for:

• The dough should have increased in size by at least 75% and be domed on top.

• The dough looks light, and jiggles when the bowl is shaken.

• The dough should easily pull away from the bowl.

• There should be visible bubbles in the dough and on top.

● With slightly wet fingers, gently release the dough from the sides of the bowl. Be careful not to pop all of the bubbles! Tilt the bowl and leave gravity to do the work to move the dough on the counter.
● Shape the dough by doing another round of stretch and folds until you have gone full circle.
● With a bench scraper or your hands, turn the dough upside down, so the seam is now on the counter. Cover the dough with the bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes.
● Let the dough proof (rise again) in a a small mixing bowl lined with a towel. The purpose of this proofing basket is to keep the tight shape that you will create, so make sure you are using a standard bowl that is small enough to help keep the shape.
● I don’t dust the bowl towel with flour since the rolled oat will help to prevent the dough from sticking.
● Pepare the oat topping by laying a clean tea towel on your work surface. Pour more rolled oat on the tea towel in a single layer. Set aside.

Final Shape

● After 30 minutes of rest, flip the dough, with the seamed side up. Gently pull the bottom of the dough towards you, then fold it towards the center of the dough. Pull the right side of the dough out and fold towards the center. Repeat with the left side. Finally, stretch the top of the dough away from you and fold towards the center of the dough.
● Flip the dough over again, seam side down.
● Gently cup your hands around the dough ball. Turn the ball in a clockwise motion about a quarter turn and then softly pull the dough towards you. Do this repeatedly until you see the dough form a tighter and more round shape. Stop if the dough starts to tear.
● While holding the dough carefully in one hand, lightly dampen the top of the dough with some water. Then gently roll the wet dough onto the towel with the rolled oats. The rolled oat should stick to the dough. Re-roll if you missed any spots.
● Carefully lay your dough into your proofing basket (oat side down) and cover it with a plastic bag.

Cold Proof

Place your proofing basket in the fridge to cold-proof for 8–72 hours.

Placing your dough in the fridge slows down the fermentation process, which deepens the flavors of your loaf. It also gives you flexibility in when you want to bake your bread.

But don’t wait too long! If left in the fridge for too long, your dough will over-ferment, causing the dough to not be able to rise while baking.

Score

● 30 minutes before baking, place the dough in the freezer. This helps the dough to be firmer for easier scoring.
● At the same time, place your Dutch oven in your oven and preheat to 500 degrees F. Allow the Dutch oven to preheat for at least 30 minutes.
● Place a piece of parchment paper on your workspace and gently flip the bowl upside down over the parchment paper. Since you coated the dough with rolled oats, your dough should slowly release and fall onto the parchment paper, landing in the middle with the oat side facing up.
● With a sharp knife, score a crescent moon shape on top of the dough. This is necessary for your bread to be able to expand while baking.
● Grab the corners of the parchment paper and carefully place the Honey Oat dough into your preheated Dutch oven and cover with the lid.

Bake

● Lower the oven to 450 degrees F and bake the bread covered for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid of the Dutch oven.
● Lower the oven temperature to 425 degrees and continue to bake the bread for an additional 10-15 minutes with the lid off. If your crust is browning too quickly, cover the top with aluminum foil while you continue to bake.
● Once golden brown with the internal temperature at least 205 degrees F, remove the Dutch oven from your oven.
● Using the corners of the parchment paper, lift the sourdough bread out of the Dutch oven and place it onto a wire rack to cool.
● Allow your homemade bread to cool for at least 1 hour before cutting into it. If you cut into the loaf too soon, your interior (crumb) can turn slightly gummy.

Slice and enjoy!

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