Back in 2010, when Delhi-based food blogger Anita Tikoo first shared her tryst with sourdough baking on her blog, her comments section, which would otherwise be inundated with feedback, saw zero activity. Tikoo remembers being amused. So much so, that in her next food post, she remarked how her readers had not shown curiosity for sourdough. "Not many people were into baking breads at that time. One of the reasons was the unavailability of reliable yeast in India. What we used to get was a coarse granular yeast with an extremely short shelf-life. It couldn’t have heaved a sigh, let alone raise a loaf of bread," she says. Unmoved by the poor response, she soldiered on. "I wanted to take it to the next level, but at the time there weren’t many resources readily available [on the topic]. The sourdough posts on my blog were also not eliciting much response and so, after about a year of baking loaves and waffles, my first nameless sourdough starter ended its life in a last batch of pancakes," she recalls.

Ten years on, Tikoo has become synonymous with sourdough baking. And, her Instagram handle @a_madteaparty is proof of the community of people she has won over with her breads.