Dear Readers,
I’ve been thinking about rhythms. I resist patterns with the force of a teenager who can’t grow up. I know it would be good for me to make routines, but something in me rebels against the idea and therefore the practice. Is it an immature alignment of creativity with chaos? Some kind of emotional virus I caught as I came of age, falling in love with Beat poets, Surrealists, and remnants of the 1960s counterculture?
Whatever the reason, fighting habits is my habit. This shows up in my bread. Over the summer, in the heat and with a big construction project happening at the house – my son Felix built a deck and I became camp cook, happy to feed the crews who were helping -- I inadvertently used up all my starter. I was sneaking bread baking into houses where I wouldn’t have to heat up my own, driving loaves to my friends’ places when they were out of town. With everything everywhere and very late dinners landing to accommodate jobs that had to get done, I lost track of which jar was the mother and which was the levain. Worse still, I used every jar up.
The starter came from Ellie, my best food friend, and it came from her dear, late friend Phyllis. Phyllis used pineapple juice to get it going, and Ellie gave me some a few times before I figured out how to keep care of it. After we taught together once, I kept a jar with just a whisper of starter on the glass and fed it. Somehow, I wanted that more recent version, a remnant of what she had fed so faithfully, rather than its godchild, which lived in my loaves and fridge. Her attentions are much more regular than mine, and I suspected it would serve my bread well. I think it did, probably because I thought it would, and because of the routines she’d invested. So, I was devastated and embarrassed to make such a mistake and lose the scrap I’d saved.
Luckily, my sister Elissa, who sells books at her shop, found a package of starter in a book. The instruction card doesn’t identify where it came from, just said WORKING WITH WILD FERMENT. I rehydrated it but I didn’t see good bubbles coming along. This was right before Ellie got home from traveling, and I was embarrassed to ask her for more of her starter. How could I be so careless with something I cared so much about? But she offered without my asking and sent some dehydrated starter, and now I’m back in the bread business.
I am still struggling to find a rhythm, of course, because I’m quite settled into my lack of them. I’m trying to bake on the weekends so I can focus on writing, and I have a batch of walnut-oat dough working right now. I’ve just read Jonathan Stevens’ The Hungry Ghost Bread Book and am mulling over one of the basic premises he presents: that we are in relationship with dough, and a bakery has all of the elements that relationship needs to keep the bread rolling. He advises feeding starter daily whether you bake daily or not, and I won’t be doing that because my biggest eater is at college. But I’m thinking about the big picture, and how to make a pattern my baking can slip into on a weekly basis. Where does it fit in my life?
What do you do to create patterns in your baking? In your life? I’m eager to hear!
One pattern I can't resist is going to the ocean. Jack and I went to Crane Beach and Gloucester for a few days, and it sent me down a bunnyhole into reading about Dogtown, a wooded area of Cape Ann that has intrigued a lot of intriguing people. I highly recommend the book Dogtown by Elyssa East.
I interviewed Jonathan and his mate and co-owner of Hungry Ghost, Cheryl Maffei, for Wordloaf, and the story will land on Wednesday, so if you’re not subscribed, please consider it. Andrew Janjigian is a bread mind to follow. I’ll post a link next weekend, when I’ll be back with another dispatch about Minnie Emily Greenaway, who started her junior year of college this week in 1924. Trying to guess her patterns is pretty fun, and I’m looking forward to sharing them with you.
Amy
Wonderful essay-- I, too, have a habit of finding habits. A very regular, weekend bread routine feels good to me and keeps me fed and nourished, but sometimes I find it means I explore less and experiment less with my doughs. So somehow, without really meaning to, I have settled into this broader bread routine that goes a little something like... a few weeks of just a regular, variety of whole wheats loaf, and then every third or fourth week I get an extra burst of energy and try something new--sometimes sourdough crackers, sometimes inclusions, sometimes new flours, and sometimes, like last week, a marbled loaf!
I'm so glad to read this! I am, theoretically, a responsible person. Except when it comes to sourdough starter. Willy nilly is the best I can do. Why does it go to the back of fridge so easily? So I repeatedly get starter from kind friends.