Baking Bread: The Joy of Developing a Craft

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Recently, I stumbled upon the art of sourdough. I began baking bread because Erik, my rather tall husband, works very hard outside all day long and needs lots of carbs. I had heard of sourdough bread but did not know much about it. I felt that I should probably master the simple skill of baking the most basic bread before exploring the seemingly complex world of starters and fermentation. The bread I baked satisfied hunger, but I am not convinced that it provided much nutrition or that it was terribly flavorful. At the time, though, I was happy to pull something edible out of the oven in time for dinner.

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Sometime during my foray into the bread baking world, I had a phone conversation with Shannon. I mentioned that I was attempting to bake bread and enjoying it. She immediately (and excitedly) asked if I had a sourdough starter. I admitted that I did not, knowing enough to be aware that my bread baking, without a starter, was somehow inferior. Shannon began telling me about her starter and why sourdough bread was worth investigating. She explained that this was an ancient way of baking bread, using wild yeast instead of manufactured baker’s yeast. The flour fermented and released its nutrients in a way that is impossible with modern yeast.

I had been seeking justification for my bread baking. It was, perhaps, saving us a little money. The bread tasted a little better than store-bought, though we never bought anything special. It did not seem likely that we would be unable to buy bread on demand, but it was good that I could bake it if needed. Generally, I did not eat much bread because my metabolism does not like simple carbs, but perhaps this homemade bread was a tiny bit healthier than the heavily processed store-bought kind. None of these justifications seemed to suffice. But when Shannon shared her experience with sourdough bread, I was hooked because there were so many good reasons to try it. 

Justification for baking my own bread now proves abundant. Most simply, sourdough tastes better than any other bread. Each baker develops her own uniquely flavored bread because wild yeast is different everywhere. There are thousands of strains! Baker’s yeast is only one of thousands. In addition to giving it great flavor, the fermentation process develops good bacteria and releases nutrients from the grain which makes sourdough remarkably healthy. Developing a starter affords many ways to make common recipes healthier and easier (biscuits, pancakes, pie…the list goes on!) Everything I learned about sourdough revealed more about the tradition of bread baking and crafting healthy delicious whole foods.

As I developed a better understanding of the dough and its fermentation process, I developed a better understanding of how to do something well. Planning ahead was essential; baking each new loaf provided routine and order to my day. The recipe I followed provided structure; it gave me rules and a guide. Ever so slowly, I have taken that recipe and changed it to fit my day, the needs of the moment, the climate. I have learned to read the leaven, the dough, the crust and adapt each. I do not go outside the recipe’s lines, but there is plenty of room to stretch within them. If I want a lighter, less dense loaf, I need a longer time to fold and develop the dough. I use different percentages of various flours and different amounts of water to produce different textures. When the kitchen is cold, the leaven takes longer to grow. And these changes only pertain to one kind of bread! 

Once I learned a little about bread baking, I had to wonder why this knowledge was not common and passed on to me from the older women in my life. Had I begun baking with wild yeast in this intuitive way with my mother when I was very young, I would have mastered these little nuances of the process long ago and my daily routines and habits would have blossomed along with the bread. Instead, I grew up with no-carb diets like the Atkins Diet, learning naturally to avoid bread and starch. Baked goods were the enemy of being healthy and thin. As an adult, I have tried a myriad of fad diets, experimented a great deal with my own nutrition, and have searched perpetually for the seemingly nonexistent easy-to-follow balanced formula for eating delicious, commonly found foods without gaining quick pounds. Yet when I learned about sourdough and the process of fermenting grains, it took very little research to realize that the grain itself was not always the culprit but rather the way that the grain was processed and prepared. What a simple solution! It is different than any of the others I have explored because it involves preparing food in a way that is not new, innovative, or terribly challenging. The ingredients are relatively easy to find, filling, and delicious. And while this method has not transformed me into a supermodel, I have not felt so healthy in all my adult life. There are many reasons why my mother did not bake bread this way, or my grandmothers. I certainly do not mean to question or doubt them. But this is an objectively good way to eat and at some point, this knowledge was lost, more or less. At one time, a woman could learn to master the art of nutrition from working in the kitchen with her mother, and after that initial mastery of basic principles, she could begin to adapt and grow her talent and ability to fit them to her own life. Strict mastery came first, adaptation second.

And so came the realization that this principle holds true in the rest of life. So often I begin by doing things “my own way”, rather than seeking out the time-tested, traditional ways of eating, cleaning, and just living in general. I am full of pride; I want to develop my own ways. Mostly this means I do not want to be taught; I do not want to receive someone else’s knowledge. And so frustration often visits me because my own way is generally not the best way. Modern society seems to possess this tendency as well, in the name of progress. It seeks to adapt that which it does not know. Children should guide their own education; norms and customs are superficial stereotypes; to each his own, a maxim also known as “you do you.” Has our society lost all sense of preservation and conservation? Is it best for each generation to begin again, develop their own way, and let the next generation do the same? This does not lend itself to efficiency or progress. Where does mastery fit into this cycle? 

“Entire generations forsook mastery of their elders’ wisdom and jumped directly to adaptation. Subsequent generations received nothing to master but were expected to create ex nihilo.”

It seems obvious that each generation has the duty to pass on its knowledge of health and wellness to the next. Our society is obsessed with being healthy and if one person has found a health “secret”, he should share it. But why stop there? Shouldn’t each generation include all that is good, true, and beautiful? When even one generation fails to achieve mastery, it must fail to pass on that knowledge, and it is all but lost. The twentieth century witnessed the near-extermination of much tradition, art, and skill. Simply observe the drastic changes in education, agriculture, or the common diet. Entire generations forsook mastery of their elders’ wisdom and jumped directly to adaptation. Subsequent generations received nothing to master but were expected to create ex nihilo. 

Fortunately, the end of the twentieth century and the first fifth of the twenty-first have been a time of rediscovery. The rebirth of classical education began around thirty years ago and has only built steam. Men like Wendell Berry have examined the blessings of small-town farm life. But we see this perhaps most clearly with health. Our society has quickly realized that a lot of the short cuts that were developed in food processing over the last century are not very good for our bodies. Perhaps the traditions of previous generations contained certain benefits that even they did not realize or understand, yet they did understand that what they had was good. It is right to grieve over what has been lost, but it is a blessing to rejoice in the rediscovery of good things, even the most simple, like sourdough.

Baking bread renews and generates humility in my prideful heart. It is difficult to make good bread by hand and it requires great attention to someone else’s word and to the dough. Mastery takes patience, care, and a good bit of failure. There is limited control over the wild yeast and the flour. I must watch and listen and wait. I can begin the leaven one night and usually I will not taste my bread until two days later. The process is time consuming and after all the hard work, the bread might not turn out just right. But the pillowy soft dough entices me again and again. The crunch of the golden brown crust lures me back to the little bit of flour and water. I am ever humbled that these simple ingredients come together in such lovely loaves at the work of my own hands. I am so thankful for this new [re]discovery, and I look for more that could enrich my life and enliven my thought. Perhaps bread baking uniquely leads to philosophizing because making sourdough starter and then transforming it into bread is such an enriching activity by its nature. Or perhaps developing any craft reminds us of the Image we bear. We are creators after the fashion of the Creator. His recipe is our guide, His creation our model. There is much to master and so much room to stretch and the joy of the craft is abundant.