After growing an international online sourdough community from her home in the South West, a Harvey mum is gearing up to launch her first cookbook, showing bakers how they can be the boss of sourdough.
The Pantry Mama founder Kate Freebairn’s debut cookbook Easy Sourdough On Any Schedule will go on sale from September 18, with pre-ordering available from August 4.
“I think my book comes at sourdough from a different angle,” Freebairn said.
“It’s not so much how to make sourdough in a perfect world, it’s how to make sourdough no matter what life throws at you.
“Even if you literally have five minutes before you go to bed, you can still make sourdough, and I show you how.
“There’s something in there for everybody, whether you’ve got kids, live alone or you work full time, whatever your situation is you will be able to make sourdough. I guarantee it.”
It’s the latest achievement for Freebairn who runs The Pantry Mama with her husband at home alongside their three sons, sharing her recipes and sourdough hacks across the globe.
Born in Harvey, Freebairn said she had cooked ever since she was a young girl but her bread-baking journey began when she was living in Newman with her husband, before they moved back to the South West.
“We’d always get cut off by the cyclones and things and couldn’t get bread — there was no bakery out there” she said.
“I just started making like focaccia and loaves of bread in my kitchen and that’s sort of where it started.”
Later wanting to share her own kitchen hacks, tips and tricks, Freebairn said she created a Facebook page where she began sharing her passion for cooking.
“Then it just happened that we all got locked down in COVID,” she said.
“One morning, it was a Sunday, I shared my recipe for sourdough starter and it just went viral and that’s how it took off.”
As sourdough became more popular while people were stuck indoors, Freebairn said she began to share more of her recipes, eventually starting The Pantry Mama in 2019.
She now has a following across the globe, which includes the USA, United Kingdom and Canada.
More than one million people view her blog pages each month while her Facebook group hosts more than 300,000 members.
Her upcoming cookbook is set to include 60 core recipes, including active sourdough starters and sourdough discard recipes, along with 118 recipe variations.
Freebairn said this included a mix of fan favourites, retested to ensure they were the best they could be.
While drafting the cookbook and its recipes, Freebairn said she went through about 470kg of flour, 74kg of butter, 324 eggs and 50.5kg of sourdough starter.
“Some of them have been updated a little bit, and then we also have included a whole load of new recipes,” she said.
“Most of my recipes begin as like a note on my phone or like a scrap of paper written on my kitchen counter that kind of sits there and they go through that process.“
She said her favourite recipes in the book were her baguettes and her chocolate chip cookies.
For anyone hesitant about baking sourdough, Freebairn’s advice was to just give it a go.
“Sourdough is the kind of thing that every loaf you make will give you feedback,” she said.
“It’s just like any skill, I guess you just keep going and every day you get better until one day you’re pulling out big loaves every time.
“If I can do it, anyone can do it.”
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