Lori Borgman
I made my first loaf of sourdough last week. It took less time to give birth to our first child than it took to make that one loaf of bread.
Why did I make sourdough? Because I’m weak. I succumbed to peer pressure. We have granddaughters making sourdough. They nudged and prodded and threw flour in the air until I agreed to give it a try.
The first thing you do to make sourdough is spend hours and hours on the internet reading about why one method is superior to another. Eventually, your eyes cross, your head bobs for the fourth time, then crashes onto your computer keyboard.
Step two is making a starter. This is a slurry of flour and water you mix in a bowl, (preferably in a rustic crock suitable for photographs) covered with a tea towel (also suitable for photographs).
You leave this on the counter for five or six days. When have you ever left food sitting at room temperature on the kitchen counter for days on end and trusted it was safe to eat?
Nevertheless, each day you check the mixture, talk nice to it, remove a portion of it and add a fresh measure of flour and water. This is called “feeding the starter.”
Put “feed the starter” on your to-do list or you will forget about it and be caught in an endless cycle of restarting the starter.
On perhaps the fifth or sixth day of feeding the starter, you give it a stir and bubbles appear. This is fermentation. Congratulations! You are now ready to make bread.
For beginners, the most common question is, “What time do I start making the bread?” People ask because the process can take anywhere from six or eight hours to two days.
To prep dough for baking, you mix, rest, fold, turn, fold, turn, circle left, clap, clap, shuffle, shuffle. It’s line dancing for people who love sourdough.
I’m not saying the process is time-consuming, but it’s been a week since I made a decent sit-down dinner for the two of us, days since I answered emails or texts, and now I hear they miss me at the gym and are tossing about words like “slacker” and “uncommitted.”
Who kneads them? I’ll roll with it. I’ll rise to the occasion.
The dough is finally ready and into the oven it goes—on approximately day 59, give or take a month.
I wait, worry, pace the floor and watch the clock. I monitor progress through the dirty oven glass. I send text updates to fellow bread makers.
The timer sounds. The bread is finished. I ooh and aah. I take pictures of the bread alone, me cradling the bread in my arms and the bowl and dish towel that made it all possible. In the morning, I send out bread announcements.
Was it worth all the time? Ab-sh-loot-ley. Sorry, my mouth was full.
But should I ever again buy sourdough bread at a grocery or bakery, I will never, ever, ever, ever complain about the cost.
