The Ordinary Miracle of Bread
The why and how of my sourdough loaves (because May is the perfect time to bake bread!)
Did you know that there is wild yeast in the air?
If you stir together flour and water, leave it uncovered and give it time, it will begin to catch the yeast in the air. Give it more time and the mixture will begin to bubble and rise. In just a few hours it will have doubled in size and been transformed into a magical substance called “starter”. You then have a raising agent with surprising health benefits that you can use to make a plethora of baked goods, including sourdough bread.
I learnt to bake sourdough bread last May when my friend Rebecca invited me over for a tutorial with a few other bread-curious friends. We’d all benefitted from the delicious loaves of Rebecca’s labour but we’d had a hard time believing that they were really as easy to make as she kept telling us they were.
“I would need you to walk me through every single step,” I said, jokingly.
“Ok, let’s do that!” she replied.
A couple of weeks later we gathered in her kitchen. She’d prepared us each a station with a little pot of starter, a bowl, a wooden spoon and a tea towel and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to feeling as though I’m in an episode of The Great British Bake Off. Because Rebecca is thoughtful and generous and knew I was being serious when I told her I needed her to walk me through each step, she had pre-prepared dough at various stages so that we could encounter every step of the process. This meant that, as well as coaching us through the initial stages of bread making, she was able to walk us through what to do after both the first rise and the second rise. I’m not sure we were good students but she was definitely a good teacher. Most importantly, we all had a lot of fun.
The next day, enthused by my first attempt at bread and excited to try out my starter, I began to make my first solo loaf. As per my usual tendency to overthink things, I ruthlessly googled every single step in the process to remind myself of exactly what Rebecca had said. When Google wasn’t clear, I called Rebecca. She picked up at the first ring. That first loaf was forgettable. I was hoping for instant success but it took me at least four loaves to get it right. I think I called Rebecca about twenty times that week. I was sure I was being annoying but now, when I bring it up, she just says, “oh that was such a fun week!”.
I’ve lost track of how many loaves I’ve made in the past year and yet my mind is blown every time I open the oven door and see that, yes, once again, flour, water and salt have been transformed by air and touch and heat to become food that both nourishes and delights.
It feels like a miracle.
Strictly speaking I know it’s not. David Hume would roll in his grave if he heard me talk about bread as a miracle. Then again, I’ve never been convinced by his definition of a miracle as a “transgression of a law of nature”. For Hume a miracle is a Divine “violation” of natural order. This language conjures up an image of a neatly law-bound world with God standing outside and occasionally violating the laws of that world as “his” fancy takes him. This isn’t the God I believe in and it’s not the way I experience the world.