How to Host a Beginners Sourdough Class
Hosting classes is a wonderful opportunity to bring women in my community together for a time of learning, fellowship, and delicious sourdough bread!
This post is all about how to host a beginners Sourdough Class from the comfort of your home or any space. How does your class need to be organized? What do you need to have prepared? Should you have multiple doughs at different stages to teach on them? These are just a few questions we will go over.
Hosting a sourdough class is such a fun way to bring the community together to socialize and share your skill of baking sourdough bread. When I announced on my facebook page, Homestead in Bloom, that I was going to host my first class, I fully anticipated to have nobody interested. However, I had so many people reach out that I had to set a date for another class so we weren’t too full! What a blessing that was!
Step 1: Decide what you would like your class to look like. Here are a few question to ask yourself. Just brainstorm and get an overall idea of what you want the outcome of the class to be.
How many people could comfortably fit in my space?
What supplies do I want to provide and what will students be responsible for bringing to the class?
Do I want to serve food and drinks?
How much will I need to charge in order to provide the supplies I want to provide but also make a profit?
Step 2: Create a visually appealing graphic! To create this graphic, I used Canva.com. That is my go-to website to create any graphics, I even made my logo there! It is such a user friendly website, and it is perfect for creating graphics to promote your upcoming class.
Step 3: Order your supplies! Once you’ve got your graphic posted, you’re just waiting to see how much interest you get! Once I got 4 people interested in my class, I went ahead and ordered the amount of supplies I needed to get for my students. I decided on a class size of 10, so that is the amount of each item I ordered. You want to make sure you have plenty of time for everything to come in. I chose to provide the following things for each of my students, their very own sourdough starter, wooden spoon, tea towel, bread lame, and banneton basket to take home and use on their sourdough journey. The only thing my students will need to bring to class is a large ceramic/glass mixing bowl and a digital food scale. In this post, I go over the essential supplies for starting your journey of baking sourdough bread. It also denotes in the post the things I am providing for my students as well as links to shop.
Step 4: Start creating your resources! This is such a fun part for me. I love to design, plan out, and figure out what is needed for an event. For this class I decided to make the following printable items to place on their workspace before class.
A name tent for each workspace to ensure people get to work besides the people they came with.
A laminated sourdough boule recipe card with detailed instructions to look over during class.
A printed “notes” paper and pen for students to take notes during the class as needed.
All other FAQ’s, new recipes, and other information will be posted digitally to our private student group on facebook, or to the blog for students to have easy access to.
Step 5: Get your resources printed and laminated if needed, supplies gathered, and ideas flowing! If you want to be a little extra with your class like I did, then you could offer some simple snacks, drinks, and wine during your class! This idea came from me envisioning what I wanted the atmosphere to be like, and I decided that I wanted this class to feel like a girls night, but educational! Since I decided to serve snacks and drinks, I needed to get plates, cups, and napkins to prepare. As for decorations, I decided to not do any. The esthetic of my home will tie into the vibe of the class that I am going for. You could have fun with it and do a theme, but that is just more of an expense, so keep that in mind. We want to try to keep our profit high, while also cultivating the most engaging experience for the students!
Step 6: Start getting the starters ready as well as the extra dough for teaching! Here is my template for the preparation schedule I made for myself. Keep in mind, this is what I decided to do for my class of 10 students, so if your class size is smaller, you can adjust as necessary. Get your Sourdough Class Hosting Guide here.
I hope you found this post helpful, and if you are planning on taking this information and hosting your own class, I would love to hear about it in the comments! It is such a beautiful thing to bring in women and teach such a valuable skill.
Thank you so much! – Kaylin
