If Your Sourdough Could Talk
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| A loaf of my sourdough bread in a cloche. |
The death of my career was expected, but that didn’t mean I didn’t grieve hard when it happened. I cried every day. I went on a lot of long bike rides out in the country. And, of course, I made a sourdough starter from scratch. His name is Seymour and even though he’s only 5, he has lots of offspring because lately people are regularly asking me to leave starter on my front porch for them. (Seymour even has his own Facebook page.)
You get it. Everybody you know is now baking with sourdough because we are all grieving over the pandemic, and yeast is hard to source. Also, baking bread fits into the rhythms of a day at home, which millions of people are suddenly adjusting to.
Adjusting to the Covid-19 pandemic has not been that hard for me. Adjusting to losing my career as a newspaper journalist was much harder. I make my living as a writer now, so I had already adjusted to working alone at home. I enjoy reading, writing and doing little domestic things other than housework, so it hasn’t been a huge hardship for me to give up the occasional outing.
My history of baking bread dates back to when my first child was born. I wanted to stay home with her, and I knew we could swing it only if I took drastic measures. I decided I would cut our food bill by making everything from scratch, including bread. I found a milling company that would sell flour and yeast in bulk at a significant savings. The minimum order of flour was a 100-pound bag. It was all I could do to wrestle the thing home. I got it inside the door and left it there, exhausted.
A few hours later, my then-husband came home, thought to himself, “Looks like Michelle bought a giant pillow,” and attempted to kick it out of his way, nearly breaking his foot.
When I went back to my newspaper career a few years later, after my second child started school, baking bread simply didn’t happen much. I had a little more money and a lot less time, so I loosened up the grocery budget enough to buy bread. I always hoped I’d have time to bake more bread eventually.
Eventually came with the layoff. By then, the first marriage was long past and I’d married a Dutch man I’d met when he was visiting his U.S. relatives, one of whom was a friend I’d met at work who introduced us.
Harrie has never adjusted to pillowy soft American bread. He misses the crust and texture of the heartier European hearth breads he had eaten his whole life. So there I was, grieving for my lost newspaper career, with time on my hands and a hungry Dutch husband.
I spent a couple of weeks bringing Seymour to life out of nothing but flour and water. Many people believe it’s the wild yeast in the air that magically turns flour and water into a powerful mixture capable of raising bread. But the truth is, the leavening agents are already present in the grain and just need the right conditions to bring them forth. You can choose to see that as a metaphor for the hidden abilities we all have inside us but don’t recognize until hardship hits, if you like that sort of thing. Or not.
One of my favorite subjects is how grains, now often disrespected as a food source, are literally the foundation of civilization. Hunter-gatherers had to move frequently as the supply of roots, berries and game were depleted from an area. To establish a city, you needed a plentiful food source that didn’t require picking up and moving the whole settlement. That was grain, and turning it into bread has always been one of the best ways to prepare it.
Bread can’t really be made on the run. It was traditionally baked on the hearth. That’s why “hearth” and “home” are practically synonymous, as are “bread” and “food” at times: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Bread is a big deal in many religions, including Christianity, in which it symbolizes or is even literally believed to be the body of Jesus when taken as communion.
So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many people are taking up an ancient baking technique while they are confined at home and scared. It satisfies deep needs for creativity and self-expression, it’s delicious and nutritious — and as a bonus it yields brag-worthy Instagram pictures.
Plus, sourdough is almost a pet. It’s a living thing that requires some attention to thrive and you cannot just leave it alone for long periods like you can a jar of yeast. Sourdough is popular now for the same reason shelters report their dogs and cats are being adopted at record rates right now. If you’re not ready for a dog, you can try your luck at a sourdough starter. If you fail with sourdough, the stakes are a lot lower.
But they exist. Once, I forgot that I’d placed my crock of sourdough in the oven to keep it warm, and turned on the oven to preheat it. When I realized what I’d done, I panicked. The starter was baked around the edges and I thought all was lost. But then I dipped my fingers into the very center and obtained a bit of unbaked starter I thought seemed OK, and mixed it into fresh flour and water. Then I waited anxiously to see what would happen. Seymour bubbled right back up, successfully resurrected. I was greatly relieved.
Making sourdough bread is very different from making yeast bread. Yeast is a reliable product. Follow the recipe and your bread will be good. Sourdough is finicky and technique matters a lot. The temperature of your kitchen, the timing of your starter’s last feeding, the type of flour and its moisture content, the quality of the kneading you do, the length of the proof, the temperature of the oven, the shape of your loaf — little changes in any of these make a big difference.
All you really need is flour, water, salt and starter, and your starter is itself only flour and water. If you had nothing but your starter and a lot of flour, you could make do on just that for a very long time. And, of course, many people in the world live that way routinely. Bread has served as the primary nourishment for millions of people, even if it’s been recently vilified by the anti-grain-and-gluten folks.
If you haven’t yet jumped onto the Great Sourdough Revolution of 2020, put out the word on social media and someone around you will probably offer a start. Ask that person for his or her favored recipe and try that one first. You can get fancy later. The internet is full of everything you need to know.
Mix your flour, water, starter and salt together and turn the dough onto the counter to knead it. You can use a stand mixer if you want, but it’s worth doing it by hand at first in order to really get to know the dough. It may occur to you, as you knead away, that good bread comes from dough that is first worked over and then given a good rest. Making bread is a contemplative act that lends itself to thinking such things, so let that happen if you like. Knead it and feel the flour and water change their nature and become dough. You will know when it happens. It will feel alive in your hands, as indeed it is. It will all feel right suddenly, and so, perhaps, will you.
A few hours later, my then-husband came home, thought to himself, “Looks like Michelle bought a giant pillow,” and attempted to kick it out of his way, nearly breaking his foot.
When I went back to my newspaper career a few years later, after my second child started school, baking bread simply didn’t happen much. I had a little more money and a lot less time, so I loosened up the grocery budget enough to buy bread. I always hoped I’d have time to bake more bread eventually.
Eventually came with the layoff. By then, the first marriage was long past and I’d married a Dutch man I’d met when he was visiting his U.S. relatives, one of whom was a friend I’d met at work who introduced us.
Harrie has never adjusted to pillowy soft American bread. He misses the crust and texture of the heartier European hearth breads he had eaten his whole life. So there I was, grieving for my lost newspaper career, with time on my hands and a hungry Dutch husband.
I spent a couple of weeks bringing Seymour to life out of nothing but flour and water. Many people believe it’s the wild yeast in the air that magically turns flour and water into a powerful mixture capable of raising bread. But the truth is, the leavening agents are already present in the grain and just need the right conditions to bring them forth. You can choose to see that as a metaphor for the hidden abilities we all have inside us but don’t recognize until hardship hits, if you like that sort of thing. Or not.
One of my favorite subjects is how grains, now often disrespected as a food source, are literally the foundation of civilization. Hunter-gatherers had to move frequently as the supply of roots, berries and game were depleted from an area. To establish a city, you needed a plentiful food source that didn’t require picking up and moving the whole settlement. That was grain, and turning it into bread has always been one of the best ways to prepare it.
Bread can’t really be made on the run. It was traditionally baked on the hearth. That’s why “hearth” and “home” are practically synonymous, as are “bread” and “food” at times: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Bread is a big deal in many religions, including Christianity, in which it symbolizes or is even literally believed to be the body of Jesus when taken as communion.
So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many people are taking up an ancient baking technique while they are confined at home and scared. It satisfies deep needs for creativity and self-expression, it’s delicious and nutritious — and as a bonus it yields brag-worthy Instagram pictures.
Plus, sourdough is almost a pet. It’s a living thing that requires some attention to thrive and you cannot just leave it alone for long periods like you can a jar of yeast. Sourdough is popular now for the same reason shelters report their dogs and cats are being adopted at record rates right now. If you’re not ready for a dog, you can try your luck at a sourdough starter. If you fail with sourdough, the stakes are a lot lower.
But they exist. Once, I forgot that I’d placed my crock of sourdough in the oven to keep it warm, and turned on the oven to preheat it. When I realized what I’d done, I panicked. The starter was baked around the edges and I thought all was lost. But then I dipped my fingers into the very center and obtained a bit of unbaked starter I thought seemed OK, and mixed it into fresh flour and water. Then I waited anxiously to see what would happen. Seymour bubbled right back up, successfully resurrected. I was greatly relieved.
Making sourdough bread is very different from making yeast bread. Yeast is a reliable product. Follow the recipe and your bread will be good. Sourdough is finicky and technique matters a lot. The temperature of your kitchen, the timing of your starter’s last feeding, the type of flour and its moisture content, the quality of the kneading you do, the length of the proof, the temperature of the oven, the shape of your loaf — little changes in any of these make a big difference.
All you really need is flour, water, salt and starter, and your starter is itself only flour and water. If you had nothing but your starter and a lot of flour, you could make do on just that for a very long time. And, of course, many people in the world live that way routinely. Bread has served as the primary nourishment for millions of people, even if it’s been recently vilified by the anti-grain-and-gluten folks.
If you haven’t yet jumped onto the Great Sourdough Revolution of 2020, put out the word on social media and someone around you will probably offer a start. Ask that person for his or her favored recipe and try that one first. You can get fancy later. The internet is full of everything you need to know.
Mix your flour, water, starter and salt together and turn the dough onto the counter to knead it. You can use a stand mixer if you want, but it’s worth doing it by hand at first in order to really get to know the dough. It may occur to you, as you knead away, that good bread comes from dough that is first worked over and then given a good rest. Making bread is a contemplative act that lends itself to thinking such things, so let that happen if you like. Knead it and feel the flour and water change their nature and become dough. You will know when it happens. It will feel alive in your hands, as indeed it is. It will all feel right suddenly, and so, perhaps, will you.
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