Hi, I’m Liz Palmer

I’m a mom of one, stepmom of two, wife to a husband who runs a small business with me, and the unpaid head baker of a kitchen that’s rarely quiet and never spotless. Most days I’m answering work emails with flour on my elbow, refereeing a sibling debate over who’s going to lick the spoon, and stealing five minutes here and there to give my dough one more stretch and fold.

My kitchen sits on the eastern edge of the Phoenix metro in Gilbert, Arizona, where the desert keeps the room about eight degrees hotter than it should be and the starter never seems to mind.

My youngest has Childhood Apraxia of Speech, and a lot of our days are built around speech therapy, practice, and patience. Baking, weirdly, fits into that rhythm. Sourdough is the rare hobby that rewards you for stepping away. Walk away for 30 minutes, the dough’s still working. Walk away for 8 hours overnight, even better. It’s the most patient thing I do, and I think I love it because it doesn’t ask me to be anything other than what I already am.

How I Got Here

A neighbor on a local Buy Nothing group offered up some sourdough starter. I drove across town to pick up a small jar of bubbly, slightly weird-smelling flour-and-water from a stranger’s porch, drove home, set it on the counter, and proceeded to mostly ignore it for a week.

It survived anyway. So I tried to bake with it. The first loaf was a brick. The second was somehow worse. The third one accidentally turned out beautiful, and I’ve been chasing that loaf ever since.

Along the way, I tried a lot of recipes that didn’t work for my life. Recipes that assumed three uninterrupted hours, or a precisely 76-degree kitchen, or a baker’s intuition I hadn’t earned yet. So I started keeping notes. The shortcuts that actually held up. The shortcuts that didn’t. The mistakes worth making and the ones to avoid. Eventually that pile of notes turned into this blog.

What This Blog Is For

The Crumb & Chaos is for the home baker who wants to make great bread without rearranging their entire life around it. The parent making sourdough between school pickups. The full-time worker squeezing a fold into a coffee break. The total beginner who got a starter from a neighbor and has no idea what to do next.

Every recipe here has been tested in my kitchen, with my actual schedule, with my actual children running around. If it works for me, I’m willing to bet it’ll work for you.

Ready to bake? Start with my Simple Everyday Sourdough Bread recipe, the loaf my family asks for by name and the easiest place to start. Or jump to fluffy sourdough pancakes for weekend mornings. Browse From the Kitchen for every recipe, or Things I Use for the tools and gear I keep on hand.