🥂 Cheers to Eliminating Gut Health Problems

🦠 By upping fermented foods

Author

Jaclyn Kirby
September 25, 2025

Gut health is all that’s talked about now that pretty much everyone and their mom struggles with it.

But before it was a buzzy podcast topic, so many people had a similar experience to mine. Countless doctors visits as a kid and young adult, always resulting in a whole lot of nothing.

Test after test and the doctor still ends up saying, “Yeah, nothing’s wrong with you.”

But feeling uncomfortable in your body — bloated, sick, and stomach pain — is not normal. And nobody should settle for that reality.

The truth is that there is something wrong… but what doctors have to offer — drugs and surgery — are not effective in improving gut health.

So if you’re interested in taking full responsibility for your health and the way that you feel, supporting your gut health is foundational. And if you struggle with gut health issues that have always been pushed under the rug, I have some things for you to try out!

I promise I’m not recommending a probiotic to come in and solve all your problems. Those don’t work. I’ve tried many of them for many years.

It’s all about real food and lifestyle shifts that support you holistically.

There are three obvious and clear steps that I took to heal my gut, but this episode is really about the fourth and final missing piece that really clicked everything into place.

It’s about incorporating fermented foods at every meal instead of just eating a bite of yogurt once a week and thinking that does anything.

This Week’s Recipe

🥯

Homemade Sourdough Bagel Recipe

Ingredients for the dough:

- 500 grams freshly milled flour

- 100 g active sourdough starter

- 255 g water

- 40 g honey

- 10 g sea salt

Other ingredients:

- big giant glob (approximately 4 tbsp) honey for boiling

- everything but the bagel seasoning (or your seasoning of choice)

Directions:

1. Knead together all ingredients for the dough. If you have a mixer put it on medium high for 10-15 minutes. If you’re doing it by hand knead as long as you can until dough is bouncy and strong.

2. Cover with a lid and let sit on the countertop for 6-8 hours.

3. You can boil and bake from here, but I prefer moving the dough to the fridge to ferment even longer overnight.

4. The next morning, take dough out of the fridge and let sit at room temp until no longer super cold (1-2 hours).

5. Pour dough out onto a lightly floured wood cutting board. Cut the dough into 6 equal pieces.

6. Roll each piece into a ball, then stick your finger through the middle and swirl around to form your bagel shape.

7. Cover with a towel and let bagels sit for about an hour.

8. Boil a big pot of water. Stir in honey until fully dissolved.

9. Drop bagels into the boiling water one at a time. I usually do three in the pot at once. Let boil for about 2 minutes on each side.

10. Place cooked bagels onto a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with seasoning.

11. Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.

Sorry for using grams in this recipe, it’s the only measurement I use when making sourdough. If you also make sourdough, you probably have a scale… I hope :)

I’m asked for my bagel recipe probably more than anything else and I always tell everyone that it’s not really my recipe. I always start out by following recipes on Pinterest and then as I make them, I make changes that just make sense for me and the ingredients I like to use.

Also, all my recipes are very rough outlines because I don’t really follow recipes, I just use them as an outline and for inspiration.

I hope you do the same with all the recipes I share here! And if you’ve never made sourdough bagels, I’d probably start by following this recipe exactly.

Then as you get more comfortable you can see what changes I’ve made to make it easier and healthier for me.

Fermented gut friendly: sourdough, sauerkraut, & yogurt 🦠

Sourdough Bagel Breakfast Sandwich 🍳

What you’ll need:

- Homemade sourdough bagel

- 1 egg

- ½ avocado

- sauerkraut

- sriracha yogurt sauce: (mix plain Greek yogurt with sriracha, garlic powder, S & P)

- 1 tsp ghee to cook egg

Directions:

1. Mix up sriracha yogurt sauce if it’s not already made. (I use Yellow Bird Organic Sriracha Hot Sauce until I can figure out how to make this from scratch)

2. Cut bagel in half and toast it.

3. Thinly slice avocado.

4. Melt ghee in a small pan.

5. Crack egg and season with salt, pepper, and paprika.

6. Flip egg once the whites are almost fully cooked. Take egg off the pan after just a few seconds on the other side to make sure the yolk stays runny.

7. Smash avocado to the bottom side of the bagel. Spread sriracha yogurt sauce to the top side.

8. Drop about a tbsp of sauerkraut on the bottom side. Cover with your egg.

9. Close the bagel and enjoy!

🤍🤍 Jaclyn

P.S. I always link to Spotify, but Cheers to Growth is also on Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Listen where you like to!