Lessons from the bread
If 2021 had a theme it would be the year we all tried to make sourdough bread. Why is this particular baking project so intimidating it takes a worldwide pandemic to push us to the end of our culinary rope?
Anyway, last Thanksgiving my daughter who is an accomplished baker brought me a starter. Rumor has it this particular starter is more than 20 years old and originates somewhere in the Amish community of middle Tennessee. Leah went to great pains to teach me how to care for my little friend, and sent me many websites to teach me the intricacies of sourdough bread baking. Y’all, this is a science. I felt like I needed a lab coat and goggles. Instead, I bought a kitchen scale, a proofing basket, and a special razor-like cutting thingie because apparently that’s the proper way to make your bread look like it belongs in the Louvre.
My first loaf was only marginally better than my very first batch of biscuits, which were highly reminiscent of hockey pucks and broke the tip off a steel throwing knife, and I am not making this up. Undaunted, I tried again. Slightly better but it still needed a lot of work to be edible.
At this point I was overwhelmed with all the technicalities of how wild yeast works and pulling the dough to create tension on the loaf. I needed a sourdough for dummies tutorial. That’s when I remembered Jill Winger (of The Prairie Homestead) talking about how she likes to keep things simple, so I went searching and found her video on sourdough for beginners.
Voilà! A perfect loaf!
I made another the following week and (foolishly) felt like I had arrived.
Then we got Covid. Then we traveled. Then we came home with another sickness. My poor fermenting friend was neglected for many weeks in the back of my fridge, until a few days ago when I decided we needed homemade soup and bread to get us healthy.
I got it out one morning and painstakingly measured and weighed to feed it. Left it on the counter all day and … nothing. A few bubbles but no growth, certainly no doubling. Spurred on by the few bubbles clinging to life, I carefully fed it again, this time tucking it in the oven with the light on for warmth overnight. Again it produced a few feeble bubbles, but no growth.
Because I am an eternal optimist, I let it go another day, thinking it just needed time. But in its last gasp for breath, it made maybe a few more bubbles and that’s it.
During all this our friend JK was here watching me with all my weighing and measuring and babying. At one point she said, “You know, I don’t measure anything. I just throw in some water and flour until it looks good and it does fine.”
JK is an enneagram 7, who has no regard for kitchen rules. I am a 9 with a very strong 1 wing who must have rules. I am crippled without them. Hamstrung. Tell me exactly what to do and I can do it. No recipe? What kind of barbarian are you?
But by this morning, I was eyeing my lifeless little starter with a how-much-worse-can-it-get attitude, so I eyeballed equal parts warm water and flour, stirred it up, and put the jar back in the barely-warm oven. I figured tonight I would just toss the whole thing and get a new starter from Leah next time I visited. Qué será and all.
Imagine my surprise when, a mere 5 hours later, I walked past the oven and old faithful was happily bubbling and had already doubled in size! It must have been struggling to break free of the constraints of all my rule following, finally bursting forth into glorious foaminess sprinkling joy sparkles everywhere it goes.
I feel like there’s a life lesson here.
It doesn’t have to be perfect to be right? Maybe, but what I really see is that I am the starter and God is the baker. I’m never too far gone for him to get me back. And he never gives up on me.