In autumn of 2020 Shivangi Maheshwari was a bit bored.
Due to the pandemic, her clothing shop on Darby Street, The Colour Bug, was closed and, like other people in Australia, she was looking for a way to use her extra time.
Little did she know that in just two years she'd have almost 30 flavours of sourdough bread on rotation. She'd have loyal customers and a growing, glowing positive reputation as a sourdough baker. She'd also be stocking 60 to 70 loaves a week at An Apple A Day grocer in Tighes Hill.
At the time, Maheshwari had never baked sourdough bread, so she borrowed some starter from a friend and found a generic recipe online.
"I thought I'd experiment with sourdough. I've loved baking all my life but never really knew how to bake bread," she says.
"Bread was interesting to me. My husband Tom is German; he introduced me to all of these beautiful German sourdough breads."
She remembers her first sourdough wasn't that good, only half cooked. But she kept at it, and greatly improved.
She started sharing baking content on her Instagram. She worried was going to lose some friends because of all the bread she was posting, so she created the Starter Stories account. But her friends loved her bread and began offering to buy it.
People started ordering through Starter Stories, and suddenly it was difficult to manage.
She made the website in December 2020.
"I was like 'OK people are ordering, and I need to have it a bit more organised', that's the business side of me," Maheshwari says.
She has limiters on the website that keeps orders from getting too crazy, and an app on her phone to streamline the process.
At the time she was living in her little apartment in the CBD. She worked out how to bake four loaves of bread at a time in her tiny oven.
"There's beauty in doing it in small batches; I have my connection with every loaf of bread," she says.
Maheshwari started baking just regular sourdough, but she's a foodie and likes exploring different flavours.
"The first few sourdoughs were just more basic ones, so there was classic sourdough, then wholemeal with seeds, then rye with seeds and then came more flavours you don't usually see," she says.
"The zucchini and cheese happened, which is very popular at the moment. The walnut and apricot happened."
She loves the creative process of making new flavours and also gives customers the option to create their own. Popular choices at the moment are purple carrot sourdough with sesame seed crust and jalapeno potato.
She offers sourdough vegan cookies and sourdough soft German-style pretzels. Customers can also try her coconut truffles, inspired by her Indian heritage. They're a vegan version of her mum's original recipe.
"It's equally delicious, just lighter," Maheshwari says.
(She also offers vegan-friendly locally source sourdough gift baskets.)
In March 2021 she sold her bread at the Olive Tree Markets, which gave her a lot of exposure and also connected her to An Apple A Day.
As her bread's popularity rose, she and Thomas relocated to a house in Stockton, her new baking HQ.
She still bakes only four loaves at a time.
Customers have the option to pick up the bread from her shop on Darby Street or her home.
"The suburb is rising, so many families are moving in. It's a nice little ferry ride across the city," she says.
The community loves her bread; they buy it and they support her. She asked for help making deliveries in a Stockton community group, and ex-shipmaster Ron offered as he's now an Uber driver. He helps deliver to An Apple A Day.
Along with An Apple A Day, she sells between five and 25 a week individually.
She's not sure yet in which direction she'll take Starter Stories. The main thing is, she just loves baking in her kitchen, and she thinks that love is why the bread is so delicious.
"You touch the dough, you can feel if it's a good dough," she says.
"You feel the love that you put into it; you feel it right back. When I'm shaping it by hand, that's when I know this is going to be a good bread.
"This is why I love baking it small; I have a relationship with every little dough."
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