what spending a week making a single loaf of sourdough taught me
we’re not used to being patient
I am presently soaring with satisfaction after eating a delicious, warm, soft-on-the-inside-crunchy-on-the-outside slice of homemade sourdough dripping in butter. I have honestly never been prouder of a single creation I’ve made in the kitchen to date. And in the process — I noticed a few life lessons which could only be illuminated by the laborious, intensive and multi-day process of making a proper homemade sourdough.
We’ve all seen the trend at this point: gorgeous loaves coming out of home ovens and filling all us regular people’s houses up with the aroma of freshly baked bread. But before COVID-19, there were hardly any homemade bread-makers, and now we’ve all jumped on the trend to try it out.
Well, in the process of making one of these infamous loaves, I realized why so few people who try to make homemade bread stick with it. It is hard. It takes long. It requires a lot of attention to detail. It will annoy your family. It takes up space in the fridge and on the counter. There are not that many resources to address all the kinks for beginner bread-makers.
But in that same process, I also realised why people do make homemade bread and stick with it. There are the obvious reasons, of course — fresh bread tastes delicious, bragging rights, the satisfaction of making something yourself, etc. But the hidden benefits only accessible if you actually dive into the process are what surprised me.
Patience
First, you need to feed your starter for a week. Then on the big day, you need to wake up early to prep your dough. Then a full day of stretch-and-folds and letting it rest. It’s a lot of waiting, and timers and most importantly, a lot of patience. You can’t rush a good sourdough. It needs its time to ferment and rise and mature peacefully. We’re used to deciding to make cookies or pasta and 30 minutes later having a final product ready to eat.
We’re not used to this delay of culinary gratification. One which causes you and/or your housemates to get antsy about whether it is “worth it” or if it will even turn out. But it’s all part of the process. Hang tight and get comfortable flexing your patience muscle — one which can so easily atrophy in our world of instant gratification and immediate access.
Persistence
It starts to feel overwhelming and exhausting determining how to do every step in the process when bread bloggers drop phrases like “stretch and fold” and “scoring the dough” like they’re common knowledge. We’re not typically used to stepping out of our comfort zone in the kitchen (or anywhere for that matter), and you can therefore expect your first try to be full of self-doubt and confusion about all the sophisticated-sounding words these expert sourdoughers use and the equipment they expect you to have. Trust me, this process is 100% possible with whatever you have in your kitchen (assuming a standard kitchen and that you have some form of sourdough starter or are making your own). You just need to keep researching, asking people who have done it before and scavenging the internet for bread bloggers. Finding the information you need for this process is a lesson in persistence.
Thoroughness
Sourdough is not an easy process to get your head around. When I got my starter, I was expecting someone to just call me up and explain the recipe to me like they could for any other dish: Here are the ingredients, here’s the steps, here’s a few pointers and boom you’re ready to go.
But with sourdough, it is a much longer process, and it varies dependent on the flour you’re using, the equipment you have and the timeline you’re working with. The only way to fully master this process is to do your own research and source as many sourdough veterans as you can when you run into an issue. Being thorough and resourceful are not muscles we’re used to exercising — especially lately, when our daily routines are becoming highly repetitive and almost rote, but it feels good to flex them here, and makes the final product taste that much better.
Self-Assurance
People will doubt you. But you need to focus on the process and trust in your research! Your family may not be used to the sourdough process, and will question why it takes so long and if it even makes sense to do. But you need to remain on the sourdough path yourself and not let the noise get to you! This is a worthy mission, and if you can remain focused on the process, everyone will come to you begging you to make another one once the first one turns out.
As you may now know, homemade sourdough is a labour of love. But after spending two months dabbling in relatively easy-to-master kitchen missions, my loaf of sourdough has by far been the most rewarding product of my kitchen labour.
For anyone looking to learn to make fresh bread, there has never been a better time to do so. And why not learn a bit more about yourself in the process?At the end of the day, we could all use a bit more patience, persistence, thoroughness and self-assurance in our lives. And if it yields a steaming loaf of fresh bread in our own kitchen as well — we should definitely dig in.
Note: The main resources I used to make my sourdough were this blog post, this recipe, and this post about how to make a loaf without a dutch oven. All a good place to start, but no promises that they will cover all your research! Good luck :)