The one change that didn’t work: I started baking sourdough – and discovered my obsessive side

Tim Dowling making sourdough at home: ‘We don’t do these things because they’re easy.’ Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian

The very first sourdough starter I brought to life was a tremendous success, except when it came to making bread with it. The resulting loaf was heavy and flat, like a paving stone. It sort of tasted like a paving stone.

“We don’t do these things because they’re easy,” I told my family. “We do them because they’re hard. Hard like this bread.”