Actor Marika Domińczyk jokes that she got into making bread during the pandemic, “like everybody else!” But to distill Marika’s bread-baking down to a COVID cliché does a disservice to how much story there is behind her much-loved sourdough.“I’ve baked and cooked my entire life,” she says, a passion she inherited from her father. While her mom was a frequent meal-prepper for Marika and her two sisters, “my dad cooked because he loved it,” she explains. It was a tradition he passed on to Marika.
So when her dear friend in Los Angeles, Michelle, gave her some eight-day-old sourdough starter in early 2020 (which her kids nicknamed “stinkin’ Lincoln”), she dutifully started learning the ins and outs of bread-making. “It took me a long time to get confident with it, honestly,” she says. She made a basic sourdough recipe (which she shares with Westport Lifestyle, at right), dozens if not hundreds of times, until she could make it from memory and feel alone. Her husband and three kids were thrilled with the results. “Once I started baking good bread, we stopped buying and eating all other types of bread,” she says.
Three years into her bread-making journey, her beloved father passed away suddenly. Amid her grief, “all I wanted to do was cook Polish food and bake,” she says. Shortly after she lost her dad, a close friend was diagnosed with colon cancer. “When you have colon cancer, you can’t eat certain things,” she explains. “I thought my bread would be perfect for her. It’s so clean; it’s just flour, water, and salt. Baking bread for her every week was what got me out of the house.” Slowly, she started adding more and more friends to her bread-drop list. “This is my love language,” she says. “I love to feed people.”
That love inspired her to cast a wider net: she got her cottage baker’s license, built a bakery in her basement, and has started to sell her creations, mostly via Instagram. She named the bakery “Sourdough 17 by Marika” after her father’s favorite number, 17. It was on the 17th of February that her family came to America from Poland, and both Marika’s older sister and her middle child were born on the 17th. (Poetically, February 17th was also the date of his funeral in 2023.) The logo also features an owl, a symbol Marika has come to associate with her dad. “I feel like my dad led me here,” she says. “2023 was a crazy year, and I feel like this was the one good thing to come out of it.”
She currently offers five products: her original sourdough, a chocolate chip version, a walnut-raisin-cinnamon-swirl version, granola, and cookies. “I’ve been making my granola for 20 years,” she says. The recipe is based on a granola from La Brea Bakery in L.A., a favorite of her husband’s from when they were first dating. “That little tiny bag of granola was so insanely expensive!” she says with a laugh. “I thought: I bet I can make this. I tinkered around forever.” Her divine sourdough chocolate chip cookies, which use her starter, were developed with help from local favorite The Granola Bar. “This cookie never would have happened if I didn’t hook up with The Granola Bar,” she says. “They pushed me to make a sourdough one, and I’m so proud of it. My dad would have loved it.” She also has a gluten-free version of the cookie, dubbed the “Scandal-ous” cookie because she started making it for the cast and crew when her husband, actor Scott Foley, and her friend Shonda Rhimes were working together on the ABC drama. (Shonda also provides fresh eggs for Marika’s baked goods!)
As Sourdough 17 by Marika grows, she’s not sure where it will lead, but she’s excited to see. “I want to keep it consistent, because I love baking and I love helping people,” she says. “I just feel like this is where the journey has always kind of pointed me to.”
To learn more or to order, visit @sourdough17_bymarika on Instagram
Marika Domińczyk styled by Alana Kelen. Makeup by Lori Hamlin Penske.
Marika’s Best Bread-Making Tips
• Number one: Don’t be scared!
• Practice, practice, practice! “Stay consistent,” she says. “Just keep doing it. You’re going to fail one hundred times, and then one day, you’re not.”
• Treat your starter like a family member: “The more you bake with it and the more you feed it and discard it, the stronger it will become.”
• Designate a baking schedule: “Pick a day of the week, say, every Monday night you feed your starter and every Tuesday morning you make things with it. I suggest whenever you have the most time.”
• Use pre-boiled water: “I stick to room temperature water, boiled in the kettle and cooled.” It saves money over bottled water and gets rid of any impurities.
• Get a food scale: “It’s a lot easier, and so much less cleanup. You can dump everything in one vessel.”
• Put the water in first: “A perfect way to know if your starter is ready is if it floats,” she says. Most recipes will tell you to weigh out your starter in a bowl first and then add water, but adding the water first is a game-changer. “For the first six to nine months, my loaves were so hit and miss because I never knew if my starter was good. But if you put the water in first, that’s how you know. And if it sinks, I’m so sorry!”
• Proof in the fridge: Marika likes to do a two-day cold proof. “I don’t mess with the counter,” she says. “You have control of the temperature in the fridge.”
• Always score your bread: “It lets the steam out! I do mine in the beginning.”
• Try dehydration: Want to share your starter with someone?“After feeding your starter, put it on parchment paper or a silpat and spread it very thin. Leave it out to dry for 24 to 48 hours, and it will dry into little flakes. You can put them in an airtight jar or freeze them, and when you’re ready, add water to rehydrate it.”
Marika’s Starter Sourdough Recipe
Directions:
Day 1, ideally between 8-10 p.m.
- Place starter in a bowl. Zero out scale
- Add 150g of filtered water, mix.
- Add 150 g of flour, mix.
- Cover and leave out overnight 10-12 hours (closer to 10 hours in warmer weather). Make sure not to leave it in the direct path of the A.C. or heater. (I use microwave)
Day 2, morning
- Place 250 g of leaven in bowl. The rest goes back into refrigerator as your new starter.
- Add 600g of filtered water into bowl and stir until leaven is dissolved (it should look milky)
- Add 1000g of flour. Mix with hands.
- Cover with dishtowel and let sit for 3.5-4 hours (closer to 3.5 in warmer weather).
Day 2, afternoon
- Add 23g of salt and ¼ cup of filtered water.
- Mix and set timer for 15 minutes. (The first of 6 times mixing)
- Mix every 15 minutes until you have mixed for a total of 6 times. When you mix, scoop in and make sure to go the same way every time. If dough is sticky, wet your hands so it doesn't stick so much.
- After mixing 6 times, let sit for 15 minutes.
- Cut dough in half, fold dough into circular ball, smooth outside.
- Put a dishtowel in a bowl, place a large square of parchment paper in the bottom of the bowl, then put your dough in and cover tightly. Do this for both pieces.
- Put in refrigerator overnight.
Day 3, morning
- Place Dutch oven in the oven and heat to 500 degrees.
- Score you dough. Then take the Dutch oven out, and place dough with parchment paper underneath into Dutch oven. Cover quickly with the dutch oven lid and place into the oven.
- Bake at 450 degrees with the lid on the Dutch oven for 25 minutes. Then take the lid off and bake for another 15 minutes.
- Repeat steps 1-3 from day 3 for the second loaf.