Warning: my sourdough starter almost killed my friendship with my neighbor

So last fall my neighbor Karen asked if I could teach her sourdough from scratch. I was like sure, easy right? We spent like 3 weeks and she kept getting this weird hooch layer and blamed my recipe. Then one day she brought over her jar and it smelled like nail polish remover, not sour. I told her she was overfeeding it and she got super defensive, said I was gatekeeping baking. I just stood there with my dough hook in hand like ???. She finally tried a no-knead method I found on a random blog and her loaves turned out great. Still kinda bugs me that she called my method wrong for weeks. Anyone else had a friend or relative get snappy over baking advice? How do you handle that without burning the bridge or the bread?

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murray.spencer19d ago

My sister and I went through almost the exact same thing with pie crust back in 2018. She kept insisting her crust was tough because I told her to use cold butter, then she switched to warm butter and it got worse, but she wouldn't hear it. I finally just showed up at her house with my rolling pin and made one next to her, no talking, just doing it. She never said sorry but she uses cold butter now, so I guess that counts for something. The whole thing taught me that people get weird about food stuff because it feels personal, like you're judging their mom or something. I just keep my mouth shut now unless someone straight up asks me twice.