My hard copy of the A Couple Cooks sourdough bread recipe, sitting in plastic page protectors in a black binder, lists its printing date as 6/11/20. A lot of people decided to get into sourdough early in that year, of course; I’m one of the subset who managed to make a habit of it. The frequency of my baking varies inversely with Chicago’s ambient temperature, but over the course of the year I produce a simple, crusty boule more weeks than not.
I have some friends who are enviable bakers, braiding loaves and turning out flaky pastries and producing all kinds of desserts. That’s not me. Aside from the odd batch of cookies for neighbors, I make one kind of artisan bread, one kind of thin-crust pizza—about which more some other time—and a pan of focaccia or dinner rolls for special occasions. My ambitions are modest but I take pride in my consistency.
But I reflected this morning, as I let the loaf shown above cool on the rack, that the way I make bread is both uniquely mine and bound up in my relationships. Mom was the one who first directed me to that recipe, almost six years ago, and also the one who encouraged me to experiment with the much simpler Bread In Five Minutes book eight years before that. I still follow the ACC steps for bulk fermentation and folding, but my flour mix and hydration are quite different, and so are my in-oven temperatures and timing. Both of those I adapted from Ken Forkish, whose book my boss recommended, and whose pizza I was sharing with my friend Matthew a decade ago.
When I score my loaves for baking, I use a three-slashes-and-wheat-stalks pattern I borrowed from my friend Bronté. One big assist in getting me to a consistent practice was the surprise gift of a cast-iron bread pan from my friend Josh. My 2020 sourdough culture itself, still going strong, grew from a mix of wild yeasts in a bag of Sir Galahad flour and the air near the shore of Lake Michigan. And nothing has contributed more to successful habit-forming than the kind words of Kat, who gave me my nice bread knife, and who always gets the first slice.
Pretend I put something poetic here about breaking bread and community and whatever, you get the point. I spent most of my adult life avoiding baking, out of background intimidation and anxiety about getting it wrong. I have indeed gotten things wrong, quite a few times, especially in the early goings. But over the years, my sense that I owed it to my loved ones to keep trying helped sustain my efforts. What else is that but the staff of life?
