Want to make sourdough bread like Taylor Swift? Here’s advice from KC bakers
Even before Taylor Swift revealed her current sourdough bread-making obsession, Kansas City bakers were filling up Dan Ansaldo’s classes on how to make perfect loaves of the tangy bread.
The owner of Kansas City Sourdough Company is a KC transplant who grew up north of San Francisco, the nation’s epicenter of sourdough bread. “Sourdough was pretty much a part of our diet growing up,” he said.
He advises his students what even Swift, an experienced baker, no doubt has learned about sourdough: Don’t be disappointed if at first you don’t succeed.
“It’s unusual for your first couple of loaves to turn out as you would imagine it. So patience and persistence I think are key,” Ansaldo said. “There’s an art and a science to it, and you have to be patient and let the dough do its thing.
“So don’t be surprised if the first couple of loaves look more like a hockey puck than they do bread.”
Ansaldo learned how to make sourdough bread from a California woman who ran a hobby farm. “I’m a big garlic bread guy, so garlic parmesan was one of the first loaves I learned to bake myself,” he said. “I love making bread and the fact that sourdough was so versatile — you can make tons of different creations with it — is very fascinating to me. So we started there and started tweaking away.”
He got into making it full swing during the pandemic, when bread in California became as hard to get as eggs were last year. “All those memes of people sneaking out eggs through back alleys, that’s how it was with a loaf of bread. I was like, we need to do this sourdough thing again,” he said.
When he and his wife relocated to Kansas City in 2020 he started sharing homemade bread with his new work colleagues. It didn’t take long for them to ask if they could buy it. He works for himself now in digital marketing and runs KC Sourdough, selling bread and teaching private lessons in homes and group sessions in the barrel room at KC Wine Co. in Olathe.
He’s taught 109 bakers so far this year, on pace to teach 230 by the end of 2025. Interest in sourdough bread baking spiked during the pandemic when people stuck at home took up new hobbies, but recently began riding a new wave even before Swift’s enthusiastic endorsement.
“There’s a huge interest in people wanting to learn,” said Ansaldo, whose group classes are booked through the end of the year.
You don’t need a lot of special kitchen equipment to get started and how-to information is easy to find on numerous YouTube channels, blogs and in private Facebook communities. During her viral “New Heights” podcast appearance last week, Swift said “there’s a whole community of us and I didn’t know it. This is an underworld.”
Elizabeth Allen makes and sells sourdough bread out of her Lenexa home. She calls herself The Sourdough Yogi because she also teaches yoga and is certified in Reiki. After she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2009, she cut gluten and other foods from her diet and started making recipes from whole foods.
She liked to bake and her search for healthier recipes led her to sourdough bread, touted for a lower glycemic index than other breads, being easy to digest and generally supporting gut heath. She taught herself how to make sourdough a couple of years before starting her business in 2023.
“I love to bake, and I love to make food, so pretty much anything I put in my mouth, 95% of it is made from scratch by me,” she said. “I especially like to bake bread. And I thought, ‘What’s more challenging than making bread?’ And I thought, ‘Sourdough bread.’”
Making sourdough bread was unlike any other bread Allen had made.
“Almost anything in life is always more challenging than you think it is, so people don’t want to start things,” she said. “Just know that you’re probably going to fail at the beginning and that’s fine. I’ve been making it for years and I still have loaves that will burn. So you just can’t beat yourself up.
“All the recipes for plain (sourdough) are pretty much the same. They’re going to be different in a few grams of flour and water, but they’re all basically the same. I would start with that.”
Ansaldo likens baking sourdough bread to skiing. “It doesn’t take a whole lot to start the process, to start to learn. But it takes a lot of time to perfect it,” Ansaldo said.
“So making your basic sourdough bread at home that you can eat and it’s delicious doesn’t take a whole lot of expertise. But if you really want to perfect the craft, and get the really big open crumb and all these other fancy things, then it does take a lot of time because you have to be really scientific with it.
“But to get started for newbies, I think the main thing to hit home is that true sourdough consists of three things: flour, water and salt. That is it.”
What is a starter? Where can I get some?
“If you’ve never baked before, it might actually be easier just because it’s so different,” Ansaldo said. “If you’re used to using all these other commercial yeasts and adding this and that and whatnot, you have to kind of unlearn some of that.”
For starters, you need a starter.
“The starter is what germinates. That is your yeast. Regular bread uses commercial yeast. Sourdough is natural, it’s naturally leavened,” Ansaldo said.
“And the way that you get your ‘starter,’ the agents you use to rise your bread, you can either get it from somebody local, like we’ll sell it if people need it, or you can create it yourself.
“It’s just fermented flour. That’s all it is. You mix flour and water together and, I’m simplifying this, but over the course of 7 to 14 days, that will begin to ferment.
“The good bacteria will eventually take over, and the good bacteria produces lactic acid and carbon dioxide. And that’s what gives us that tangy flavor and that’s what gives it the bubbles in the rising agent.”
Ansaldo and Allen sell starters on their websites. You can also search Facebook Marketplace, Ansaldo said.
“There’s always people you can get a little bit of starter from,” said Allen. “... You can go get the starter and make bread today.”
Expect to spend from $5 to $10, Ansaldo said. You shouldn’t spend more because you’re buying yeast, not a loaf of bread. “You still have to do all the work to produce the loaf, so below $10 is what you should be spending for starter,” he said.
You can also buy dried sourdough starter that needs to be rehydrated, he said. Check Amazon. It will take a couple of days to get it ready to use, “but it will be faster than the 7 to 14 days of doing it yourself,” he said. “Obviously, the fastest way is just find somebody who already has a starter.”
Do I need San Francisco starter?
Ansaldo, who is working to make his website a go-to source for sourdough in Kansas City, is so serious about the science that he plans to consult with microbiologists to learn more about starters.
“From everything I have read and everything that I have experienced myself, starter will change based upon where you live,” he said. “Which is why San Francisco sourdough is so popular and so famous because it has its own microclimate that you cannot reproduce anywhere else. It has its own flavor profile. It’s the same thing with wine ... the flavor changes based upon where you’re at.
“Which is why a Napa Valley cabernet or a Sonoma County zinfandel is going to taste differently, even if you do the exact same process in Italy. Because the climate and everything influences it — the bacteria, the natural yeast and the air affect the final product. The same thing with sourdough.
“So if you buy San Francisco starter, which people sell online, and you create it, you bring it back to life, you rehydrate it here in Kansas City, it’s not going to remain San Francisco sourdough. It’s going to become Kansas City sourdough. It’s going to change because the climate here in Kansas City is different than San Francisco.
“I always tell people in our classes, don’t fall for people selling their San Francisco sourdough starter for $150, $200, because you might get one loaf of San Francisco sourdough. After that it’s going to be Raytown sourdough or Kansas City sourdough or Blue Springs sourdough ... wherever people are at.”
Do I name my starter?
Some people name their sourdough starters.
“It’s kind of — what’s the nice way to put it — it’s like a tradition, I guess,” said Ansaldo. “It’s just common that people name their sourdough starter, like, ‘Hey, this is what I made with Jill last night. This is what Bobby gave me this morning.’
“It’s kind of a fun way to discuss your sourdough. I personally do not. But I have nothing against people who choose to. My 6-year-old did name his starter: Sam the Sourdough.”
Do I need special equipment?
One of the nice things about making sourdough bread is you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get started, Ansaldo said. He recommends two must-haves.
One is a Dutch oven, a heavy pot with thick walls and a tight-fitting lid, typically cast iron and traditionally used for stews, soups and bread. They’re sold by most retailers that sell housewares — Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, Costco, Amazon.
One of Ansaldo’s recent students asked if she needed to buy from one particularly expensive brand that sells a $300 Dutch oven. “I said you can if you want, but you don’t need to spend that much money,” he said.
That lid is important.
“One of the main factors in sourdough that is different than other baking styles is steam,” said Ansaldo. “Sourdough really needs steam and high humidity when it’s rising. Commercial ovens will have steam injectors in them.
“So in order to kind of replicate the same environment, you have to get real fancy with your own oven, but the easiest thing to do is just to get a Dutch oven. ... The lid is cast iron and it’s heavy. It sits on top and traps a lot of that moisture inside.”
That steam helps make the bread’s pretty crust, giving it “oven spring.”
Ansaldo also recommends buying a digital kitchen scale. They typically start in the $10 to $20 range.
“Sourdough baking is a lot more precise and pretty much all the recipes that you will find online are going to be in grams,” he said. “So you have to have a way to weigh out your ingredients. You’re going to be weighing the water, the flour, the starter and the salt, your basic ingredients.”
Good resources
Ansaldo said the private Facebook group Sourdough Geeks, with more than 900,000 members, “is a pretty good” source of information. Members swap photos and consult each other on their creations.
“I am new to sourdough, this is my 25th or so loaf. Can I get a crumb read?” one neophyte posted a few days ago with a picture of her bread.
“If people want to get real scientific, they want to get real nerdy, the Sourdough Journey is a really good” YouTube channel and website, Ansaldo said.
“He gets really scientific. What temperature do you bake your sourdough at? How long do you leave your lid on and off? We’re talking like if you’ve been baking for several months to a year and now you want to take it to the next level, here are some things to tweak to absolutely perfect what you’re trying to do.”
Ansaldo is also helping to launch the KC Sourdough Society, another private Facebook group. “Most of these are going to be private because moderators don’t want junk posts,” he said.
Allen follows the Missouri creator of the popular Farmhouse on Boone blog and social media pages. For her nearly 600,000 Facebook followers on Tuesday, the homesteading blogger posted a photo of sourdough monster cookies, “perfectly sweet with added depth of flavor from sourdough discard. They are easy to make and oh so delicious.”
Ansaldo has learned that some of the people who take his classes have tried making the bread and “just can’t get past the disappointment phase,” he said. “So they want someone to show them what they’re doing wrong. That’s a lot of it. Or people have been doing it for a while and they’re just looking for some tips and tricks to take it to the next level.”
Many of them have been spending hours online looking at YouTube videos and blogs. “And it’s almost like … in Kansas City you ask 10 people what’s the best barbecue and you’ll get 15 answers,” he said.
“... One of the benefits of a class is to cut through the clutter. OK, this is what I’ve tried, this is what I’ve read, why isn’t this working.”
Sometimes, his students just need help with the basics. A few classes ago, as he walked through the group, he helped some students set their digital scales back to zero.
When Ansaldo heard about Swift’s podcast interview, he messaged her on Instagram offering a private class whenever she’s in town.
He hasn’t heard back and would be shocked if he did.
Sourdough, what’s the big deal?
Sourdough baking, Ansaldo said, “will get you hooked. I tell you what. It’s so versatile. There are so many different types of flours that you can use which will influence the texture and the flavor of the bread.
“And then we have all the inclusions, which is just a fancy word for anything else that you add in. One of my top sellers is cinnamon chocolate chip, followed closely by cheddar jalapeno.
“I make a cranberry walnut bread ... it’s a good Thanksgiving bread. I put dried cranberries in right at the beginning and it tints the dough pink. Even just cranberries themselves will give the dough a little pink hue.”
Swift has been experimenting, too, with flavors, she said on the podcast. Her current favorite flavor is blueberry, but she’s also made blueberry-lemon sourdough, cinnamon swirl and is workshopping a Funfetti sourdough for boyfriend Travis Kelce’s young nieces.
“It’s wherever your imagination wants to take you,” said Ansaldo. “My most recent one was coffee chocolate chip. Instead of using water in the recipe, I just used straight coffee ... and added some brown sugar and chocolate chips and people loved it at the last class.
“So it’s whatever you think of, I think that’s the obsession. You can literally make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different types of bread in your own house.”
This story was originally published August 20, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
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