It all starts with just 3 tablespoons. A tiny amount of a non-descript, beige, bubbling, gooey,
semi-solid substance is all it takes to make two loaves of bread. Every time I make bread, I
love watching those 3 tablespoons of starter bloom and grow into a week’s worth of food.
Sourdough isn’t a new concept. Certainly it was a craze during the pandemic. I even tried it
then, but didn’t take the time to really understand the art of slowing down and baking bread.
During that time, we were so busy at work. As an essential business, we converted our entire
inventory onto online to serve our customers safely. We offered curbside pick up and delivery.
I used to end my day with deliveries of wine, compost, beer, plants, delivering goods to people
who were staying home out of caution and safety. And so whenever people were hunkering
down at home, learning about the hidden contours of their kitchens and gardens, I didn’t take
the time to hone the practice of baking bread. It would be nearly 5 years later that I discovered
the joy of creating sourdough bread and pizza dough, during a time that I was carving out a
space of healing inside of my own home after the years of hustling during the pandemic. After
we slimmed down our work endeavors to just one business instead of two, I realized that I
needed more time to reflect and consider the domestic joys that I had always taken part in but
rarely gave enough patient consideration to.
Working with sourdough can be tricky and confusing. There are so many different ways that
people on the internet are telling you how to go about it that you can really second guess your
choices. I’ve found that I stick with the same basic recipe that I started with almost all the
time. It’s just flour, water, starter and salt. So simple. Once you feed those 3 tablespoons of
starter with a little bit of water and flour, it’s simply a matter of waiting for it to double. Then
you add more flour, water and salt, stretch it and fold it a few times over a couple of hours, let it
sit and double again, cold ferment over night and the next morning, the baking of the bread.
Creating sourdough loaves means that a simple soup becomes a meal. Over the summer, we
make different recipes with the sourdough bread, such as s panzanella, pizza dough, crackers
and pancakes, but it always starts with just those 3 tablespoons.
Sourdough is a metaphor for abundance. It reminds me of how fortunate I feel each spring
when I have so many seeds at my fingertips. Just a few packets of seeds become a garden
that feeds us through an entire year, and similarly, just a small of amount of starter can feed us
over and over again. When I’m feeling low, or a sense of lack, when the days are short and the
sun is stingy with its warmth and length during the day, I remember that we have more than
enough. I look at the bare bones of my winter garden, I admire the beautiful squashes in my
pantry, I plan meals around the jars of fruits that have filled my freezer and I bake some more
bread as I remind myself of how much we truly have.
The earth gives us so much and we give back to it in our feeble human ways. We create
compost from our food scraps and then turn that compost into the soil that will feed and
nourish it. We give the earth our most precious people after they have passed and sometimes
we plant trees with their bodies or remains. If we all could give back to the earth in just a small
way or at least acknowledge the bounty that it gives to us, perhaps we could solve a lot of the
“unsolvable” problems in this society. I know that it’s not as simple as that. I know that people
will continue to struggle to find food to eat, or an oven to bake in, or a warm place to sleep. I
know that I’m not solving world hunger or homelessness with sourdough. But it does bring me
great joy and more than a little bit of introspection as I share the starter or the bread with
anyone who is interested in learning the act of baking, of slowing down, of patiently waiting for
a little bit of flour and water to become something delicious.