You only need a couple of very simple ingredients: flour and water.  Then, depending on how patient you are, how much time you put in, things begin to happen.  Do you know that you don’t have to buy yeast, you can actually cultivate it? With the right mix of flour and water and a relatively stable environment, yeast begins to grow.  Wild yeast. 

As in life, it may take a few tries.  It may not go as planned.  Your particular environment might not be perfect.  And incredibly, you have to throw out a lot of the mixture and then “feed” the yeast regularly. Because before it can be used in dough, before it develops the power to make bread rise, it needs time to grow and get stronger. 

Once you create this “starter”, it will serve as the basis, the foundation of every loaf you make.  Eventually, keeping it happy and healthy will become second nature, whether feeding it and preparing it for baking or putting it to sleep in your refrigerator till you need it again.

Sourdough takes time and patience.  It’s not hard; there are just a lot of details to pay attention to.  And to create a beautiful loaf of bread takes 16-18 hours over a couple of days.  So it’s not something you can do impulsively.  You have to be able to foresee your schedule and carve out the time to mix and stretch and fold and shape and ferment and bake and cool. 

Sourdough has taught me that I can’t control everything.  I can meticulously measure flour and water by the gram on my little red kitchen scale and if the overnight temperature is too cool and my leaven has not risen, I’m going to have to start again and wait another 8 hours for the leaven to build. 

As much as I’d like to use my morning to bake the proofed bread, I’ve learned that if I let it ferment the full 16 hours in the refrigerator, I’ll be rewarded with the tangy taste that sourdough is known for.  There are no shortcuts.

The process is messy.  There is flour on the floor, dried bits of dough and flour cover my counter.  It will take extra elbow grease to clean the bowl I use to mix the dough.  I’ve stayed up way too late some nights so that I can put a fresh, warm loaf of bread on our dinner table the next day. 

Despite using the same recipe, each loaf is a little bit different.  I’m learning to “score” my loaves.  It allows bread to expand while it bakes, but scoring is also a baker’s “signature”. I’ve learned to make rounds (boules), ovals (batards), loaves, and baguettes. Some are crustier. Some have a denser crumb. But every single loaf is escorted from oven to counter by my husband or my son.  We take turns leaning over the loaf, inhaling the yeasty smell of fresh bread.

This is what joy looks like in my house during a pandemic.