Many North Shore families may know Kate Holloran as a nanny, but these days, she’s also found in her Swampscott kitchen baking sourdough goodies for her newly certified business, Kate in the Kitchen.

“It’s become more than I ever could have imagined,” Holloran said. “My favorite part is seeing people, hearing people’s reactions, seeing people eat it. It’s heartwarming.”

At its core, sourdough is fermented yeast. In addition to leavening the bread, the fermentation process produces lactic acid, which lends to the infamous slightly sour taste sourdough has. 

The National Institutes of Health report that sourdough consumption has been linked to lower insulin levels and blood glucose responses. Sourdough breaks down gluten, making it more digestible and better for people’s gut health. 

While many got into baking sourdough bread during the 2020 lockdowns at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Holloran found her calling a bit later.

“I was able to take last summer off from work. I finished one nanny job and then I was, and then I was able to take the time off before I started another, so this started as a hobby,” Holloran said. 

Learning to work with sourdough was a process. Holloran joked that “the first loaf I made was horrible, disgusting.”

“It was flat and horrible,” Holloran said. “It’s a science. It’s the time, the weather, the humidity, it all depends…But I just had the time, and I was like ‘I’m going to get this right.’ So I just kept trying and trying and it came out perfect eventually.”

Holloran said she’s been able to “learn the signs” of sourdough, like when the dough pulls away from the side of a bowl or how it feels to the touch. Holloran came to sourdough with some baking and cooking experience, having grown up watching her grandmother in the kitchen.

“She taught me a lot of things I know in the kitchen and to go with the flow. Not everything is perfect, but it’s what you created in the end,” Holloran said. 

Now Holloran has experimented with a variety of types of baked goods as well as flavors. She repurposes sourdough discard—the unfed portion of the starter removed before feeding it fresh flour and water—in items like cookies. Her brown butter sourdough cookies have the classic taste of a chocolate chip cookie with an additional layer of complexity as well as a bit of a softer and chewier texture thanks to the sourdough.  

The starter, which is actively fed and bubbly, provides the leavening power for her breads and doughs. She tries out new flavors like jalapeno cheddar, chocolate chip, chili crunch oil and green onion, and rainbow sprinkles. 

“You could put whatever you want in it,” Holloran said. “I tell people I’m going to try this and it might not be the fluffiest loaf, but the taste is always there.”

Holloran has also made a myriad of other goods like bagels, English muffins, cinnamon rolls, pizzas, Dutch babies, poptarts and donuts, all of which can be seen on her Instagram account @kateinthekitch3n. 

“Anything that you make with yeast, you can make with the sourdough starter,” Holloran said.

Holloran is hosting a birthday pop up on Saturday, August 9 from 10 a.m. to noon at 41 Suffolk Ave. Guests can enjoy coffee and mimosas while snacking and shopping Kate in the Kitchen goodies. The graphics for the event were made by Olivia Fusegni. 

There will be bagel bundles for people to pick out their own flavors. Holloran will also offer sourdough flights for the first time, so that people can have four different flavors in one box “if you can’t decide.”

The event celebrates both Holloran’s upcoming birthday on Monday and the one-year anniversary since Holloran started baking for friends and family under the brand of Kate in the Kitchen.

“Hopefully I will be doing a lot more publicly now,” Holloran said.