When the Dough Overproofs (and Life Gets Messy Too)

We’ve all been there — too many tabs open in our brains, too many to-dos on the counter. Between juggling work, family, and the little daily rituals that make a home feel alive, sometimes something gets left out too long.

Today, it was the sourdough.

You start the day with good intentions: feed the starter, fold the dough, give it time to rest. And then the meetings pile up, the kids need help with homework, the phone dings, dinner burns a little… and before you know it, that beautiful dough has puffed up and collapsed into a sticky, overproofed mess.

Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. And that’s okay.

Life, like sourdough, has its own rhythm — sometimes we catch it just right, and sometimes we don’t. The key is perspective.

An overproofed loaf might not make the perfect artisan round you envisioned, but that doesn’t mean it’s wasted. It can become something new — like a golden, herby, cast-iron focaccia that fills the kitchen with warmth and the smell of restored purpose.

It’s not failure. It’s transformation.

The truth is, shit happens. We get distracted. We try to do too much. We leave things a little longer than we meant to. But maybe that’s just life’s way of nudging us to slow down — to take what we have and make the best of it anyway. Because with bread and in life, perfection isn’t the goal — adaptability is.

So next time your dough overproofs…

Take a breath.

Turn on the oven.

Drizzle some olive oil, scatter a few herbs, and make something delicious out of what didn’t go as planned.

It’s all about mindset — and the reminder that even when things fall flat, they can still rise again, just in a different way. ☀️