Is it week four or five since we have exercised a sense of civic duty wrapped around dread and have for the most part stayed put in our domiciles with partners of all kinds, human and animal to wait until…?
Whoops, this is not the path I meant to enter, as the big news has been better described by so many others. What is more uplifting for me is learning about how we have reshuffled our lives, discovering and rediscovering priorities that are quieter and less insistent, having wished so long for a break in our schedule. Now the break has come for many of us. My survey of dear friends (through shared journals, phone calls, and Zoom—thank you, technology) has revealed a pattern.
Many of us are moving more slowly, elevating what used to be described as chores to the higher calling of “home making.”
A conversation with my dear friend Julia from Dusseldorf crystalized the whole matter. When asked about how her life had changed she answered, “The word for the day is hintertür.” Of course! Hintertür is the German word for back door reminding me that the German language draws its beauty from meaning rather than sound. Hintertür—such an apt metaphor! Its meaning was clarified by Julia’s anecdote: “Last week, I needed to go to the bank, but saw a long line of people waiting and thought, ‘this will never do.’ And so, I walked around to the back of the bank where they have a hintertür. No one was there. I walked in and took care of my business. I have always lived my life this way, going through the back door.” Many of us are living by reconsidering the back door—less obvious ways to invest our lives with meaning without the usual props.
The many faces of dear friend Julia.
Keep Calm and Bake On, Friends!*
For me, my love of food preparation has become almost an ethical challenge, as I truly am invested in wasting nothing. “Refrigerator foraging” is now a requirement, as food shopping is not the last-minute inspiration it used to be. Scraps of this and that become soups, fried rice, savory tarts, fruit curds, and pavlovas (grapefruit and passion fruit curds are made from egg yolks—what to do with all those egg whites?).
But even more inspiring is the beautiful alchemy of sourdough bread. It is made of so little—sourdough starter, flour, salt, and water—and returns so much.
Sourdough bread is the hintertür of bread preparation. Not because it saves time, but because it enriches the time you have. It is so incredibly inefficient and inconsistent—the opposite of ready-made. And it is perfect for this time, this place. Most of us have flour (King’s Roost, Central Milling, Grist and Toll, King Arthur) water and salt. Sourdough starter is one of life’s great “shares.” However, sourdough is challenging enough to keep us stimulated as these simple ingredients mean there is nothing to distract from error. Your bread is either dense and as tightly structured as a curling stone or it is a light and flavorful crusty dome.
And sourdough bread can be made from a dizzying yet inspiring variety of wheat and other grains. Their names and descriptions are mysterious enough to add poetic flair to this very basic ingredient—hard white, rye, farro, spelt, red fife to name a few—all milled into variations of flour that become bread. Every step of bread baking is aesthetic to me as it is a completely sense-based experience. To begin with the sourdough starter, my friend and bread master Roe Sie describes a good starter as smelling faintly of bananas, ripe ones at that. My starter was given to me by good friend and brilliant cook, Mario Rodriguez. He calls his starter “Paloma’s little sister,” as he began baking bread when his daughter was born.
You rely on the senses of smell and touch rather than time and measurement. There is something called hydration ratio (the ratio of water to flour): each type of flour behaves differently, so the amount of flour to water is not a constant. There is dough fermentation and proofing (aka rising): its readiness for baking is dependent on whether the day is warm or cold, the strength of your starter, and if the gluten has been stretched enough to transform the dough from a ragged mess into a springy, cohesive ball.
Bread baking mastery almost always means learning the old-fashioned way, with a mentor by your side. My bread baking masters include some of the greats who have literally walked (no running with sourdough) me through every step of the process.
From left to right:
Sumi Chang: her bread became the standard of what we could be eating outside of France.
The late, great Joseph Shuldiner and Eric Knudsen, who continues to inspire: the bridge builders to all bread baking “newbies.”
Joseph Abrakjian: He allowed me to “stage” at Seed bakery. I weighed bread dough and watched him work.
Roe Sie: He teaches the joys of milling your own flour and combining grains.
Masako Yatabe Thomsen: The most generous of bread baking mentors, she found every mistake I made when my boules came out of the oven resembling flattened berets. I milled my grain too coarsely and so it was too heavy to rise: I didn’t stretch the dough consistently or with real energy; I under-proofed the dough—”it needs to became almost jiggly with a few bubbles emerging on the surface”.
Do you Sharpen Your Shovels?
I know this is becoming ridiculously arcane, but isn’t this the point of it all at the moment?
We have this odd feeling of spaciousness and choice within the context of unprecedented restriction.
Why not allow ourselves to go down the rabbit hole of healthy obsessions?
I know I am not alone. Central Milling, one of my go-to flour suppliers, actually took a break from business to catch up with their vast backlog of mail orders. I am planning two face time sourdough instruction sessions with friends. For the first time in my life, I crested a wave early.
A coda to end. I send to you all a photo of my husband Eric’s shovels. Why? Because he took the time to sharpen them. Something else for all of us hintertür folks to consider as a sweet, small accomplishment.
Further reading on the beauty of sourdough bread with thanks to good friend, Anna Ganahl.
Some of my favorite bread baking resources. Brilliant Bread is my favorite.
And thanks to Erik Knudsen, news of a more than delightful way to participate in the science of sourdough. Yay nerds!
And of course, some recipes considering simple ingredients, most made of a bit of this and that along with one for making your own starter.
Fruit Curd From Unlikely Sources
May you all stay healthy in body and in spirit.
*From the Central Milling website.