Welcome to Chillspice!
I’m Bethany, and my husband’s name is Adam. We have been happily married for almost 25 years.
Our home is a haven away from this crazy world, so we always try to put our Lord Jesus Christ first by beginning each day with quiet time spent with Him.
Raising teenage boys with ravenous appetites keeps me very busy, so my love for sourdough baking began out of necessity during Covid when we couldn’t find bread or yeast in the stores.
In 2020, I purchased a 230+ year old sourdough starter from San Francisco on Etsy and Greta, my sourdough starter was born. She is my only daughter besides our red heeler named Ruby. :0)
From the moment I pulled my first loaf from the oven I was hooked. Making sourdough is so much fun! It provides a creative, therapeutic outlet enabling me to slow down and be in the moment as well as giving nourishment and joy to our family and friends. Every loaf I’ve made has been delicious even if it wasn’t pretty.
The goal of my blog is to help you avoid the mistakes I made and teach you how to get consistent results with every bake. With practice your bread will get better and better!!
So, why did we name our blog CHILLSPICE?
Even as a young girl, I loved to bake and cook. The excitement I felt when I got my first Easy-Bake Oven still brings me warm fuzzy feelings. I made cookies and cakes galore! Having three younger siblings to share them with gave me plenty of taste testers who always gave me their honest(and sometimes not so nice )opinion. In high school my love for baking continued, until my friends gave me the nickname “Betty Crocker” at school. 🙂 I made my first sourdough starter when I was 15 and baked several delicious loaves before my starter died. Looking back on the knowledge I have now, I really didn’t know what I was doing and the internet wasn’t around back then to ‘Google’ things LOL!!
My mom is an amazing baker! She taught me how to make cinnamon rolls, cookies, and orange dough knots (which were a Christmas family tradition passed down for generations.) We lived in the cold north-country where there wasn’t much to do besides cooking yummy stews and baking delicious bread and sweets. You don’t exactly want to go hiking or biking when it’s -25 degrees outside, so you find ways to keep busy and warm during those long cold winter months. Things were pretty CHILL up in our part of the country.
When I met my husband from Arizona, I also met “cilantro.”
Where had this been all my life? It was love at first sight, and taste!
I went head over heels for him and these new Southwest flavors. No offense, but northern food was pretty bland compared to this new, spicy southwestern cuisine. In other words our taco night growing up would usually consist of mild pace Picante sauce, and Mission tortillas.
I remember tasting homemade salsa for the first time, the only I could think was, “I have to learn how to make this ASAP!”
My husband’s mom was an amazing cook, she’d make red chile burritos that were to die for! She taught me so much about cooking with tons of flavor and seasonings, thus my adventure cooking with SPICE began, and I’ve never looked back.
So, that’s why the name, “CHILLSPICE.”
It’s two drastically different flavor profiles from opposite ends of the country melded into one.
I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about me and why I’m so obsessed with sourdough.
Here are a few of my favorite sourdough blogs. They share so many wonderful recipes and valuable information.
https://www.theclevercarrot.com
Happy Baking,
Bethany
