If you’ve never spent much time at our house, then you probably don’t know that we are prone to break out into spontaneous, impromptu Flight of the Conchord-esque (but perhaps not as funny) song. Sometimes our jam sessions flop harder than a Debbie Gibson comeback (*sigh*). Other times, they stick around and become part of our ever-increasing family soundtrack. The later is true of “Feeding the Culture,” a little anthem we sing when making our sourdough bread. (Think Thomas Dolby meets rock opera, not Balki’s bibi-babka song from “Perfect Strangers”—talk about 20-plus year old earworm!)
I’ve always loved to make bread, and have been told I’m good at it. But, until we made the switch to traditional cooking, I always made bread from yeast because, although I love the taste of whole grain sourdough, the recipes (which take a good eight days to make) always seemed too intimidating. I don’t remember to pick up my mail every day, and God forbid I’ve promised to send you a package—you’ll get it with last year’s birthday card in 2015. So, knowing I’ve never been good at this kind of thing, I was afraid I’d make a poor sourdough nurturer and after two or three vigilant, committed days, I’d forget about it for another ten until a mysterious aroma alerted me to new life forms growing in some corner of my kitchen.
But, besides the fact that sourdough is the most traditional, oldest form of leavened bread making there is, and that fits right into the kind of traditional hard-core line I’ve been walking, I had good reason to believe that I should find an alternative to yeast bread.
A few years ago, when Brian and I were still in the middle of our long and difficult decade long struggle to get pregnant, I got an elimination diet from a nutritionist friend of a friend. The diet outlined a very structured cleanse of all typical food allergy triggers and then a slow add back of one food at a time to determine not only food allergies, but also food sensitivities (ie: negative food reactions that don’t qualify as allergic reaction, such as exhaustion, bloating, distraction, unexplained infertility, etc.). The diet was not designed to help people lose weight, and in fact the cleanse part was supposed to be very temporary because along with the usual allergic suspects, sugar, milk, and nuts, it eliminated many foods commonly held to be healthy and necessary vitamin, fiber, and nutrient rich foods, like most grains, several fruits, and all soy. (We were already avoiding soy for a variety of reasons, but especially because it has been shown to increase estrogen, which isn’t always a good thing for fertility!)
After some deliberation—much of it having to do with whether or not we thought doing the experiment, which seemed a lot like a crash diet, would trigger my eating disorder—we embarked on the quest (with therapist on speed dial) to see if food was the cause of our infertility. We moved all our pre-prepared food to the freezer and pantry in the basement, because we couldn’t bear to just throw it out. Surprisingly, we feasted well, and at home, during the two week cleanse. I made grilled lamb chops, salads, and rice. We ate no bread, no yeast, and no oatmeal. At the end of two weeks, we felt pretty good. We bounced out of bed each day and there seemed to be no end to our energy and relative good moods. It was like we’d found the super route to vitality and were just cruising along with no end in sight.
We added back lemon juice—to make salad dressings. Not a blip on the radar. Vinegar was next—to make homemade ketchup—and still no change. It wasn’t until we added back whole grain pasta that we experienced any kind of bump in our feel-good ride. After a meal of pasta, our energy was lower. It was like moving from the fast lane into the slow lane. When we added yeast bread back in, we hit a bump, blew a tire and had to exit the feel-good super highway.
I’d like to say that we got wise and stopped eating yeast breads as part of our regular diet, but the truth is we craved yeast bread. We did cut back, for awhile, but as we got used to it again, some of our energy returned and we just never had the motivation to cut it out completely. I wasn’t regularly making our bread then, and honestly, once we’d added most foods back to our diets, we ate healthier, but still bought many pre-made things like dressings, ketchup and bread.
The thought of making sourdough just didn’t appeal to me because I was busy schlepping to work with all the other do-lunchers and didn’t have time for eight days of bread. (Let’s not even get into the fact that I have even less time now as a stay at home mom). That was pre-hard core traditional cooking thinking. The new thinking goes something like, “Just because I’ve never done it doesn’t mean I won’t do it now.” So, I made up my mind that our yeast bread days were numbered and I was going to start a sourdough culture.
It took planning to fit bread making into the daily routine. I knew I would have to change the container and add flour and water to the starter each day for seven days. I also knew that on the eighth day I would need to make the bread and give it up to 12 hours to rise before baking. Because I hadn’t done it before, I decided that letting the dough rise overnight was not an option because I would be too asleep to monitor its progress.
Each morning, at our house starts the same way. The alarm goes off. Brian sleepwalks over to turn it off. Mia starts nursing as we snooze. We all oversleep. About 45 minutes later, the dog gets restless and starts huffing at the bedroom door wanting to be let out. Then, I get up and go downstairs to let him out and start breakfast. The day I made the starter was no different, except that after I lit a burner under our oatmeal (which had been pre-soaked in whey and water, but that’s a different blog), I got out a bowl (plastic as I do not yet have glass bowls of the right size for this), a wooden spoon, cheesecloth, a rubber band, my pitcher of filtered water, and my rye flour.
Don’t stop reading now if you don’t like rye bread. Although the starter is made from rye flour, the bread I make is wheat bread, not rye. The rye flour is just better for the starter culture and does not give the bread a rye flavor! As I was measuring the flour, I felt the strong urge to break into song.
Come on, you know the feeling! A lyric pops onto your lips and you feel the urge to throw back your head and belt it out at the top of your lungs, startling your husband into dropping his morning smoothie! In my best operatic voice (which lands somewhere in the negative range of the 1 to 10 scale), I belted out, “I am starting a culture!”
It had a good, infectious vibe to it.
With all the pomp of a performer in mock royal garb, Brian boldly turned to me in his pajama pants, totally rocking all that manly, hairy-chested glory, swept his hand in front of him, and sang out with a grand gesture, “You are starting a culture!” It couldn’t have been more perfect if we had rehearsed it!
As I poured the flour and water into the bowl, I looked up at him (spoon in hand) and dove in to stir, boldly intoning, “I am feeding the culture!”
We had several good rounds of singing while I covered the bowl with a double layer of cheesecloth, and put a rubber band around it. Then, I put it on a kitchen cart near a window and went on with breakfast.
The next morning, we all eagerly went to look at my little colony of future bread makers. As I changed the bowl, and added a cup of rye flour and some filtered water, I again felt the inspiration. “I am feeding the culture!” I exclaimed in song. Daddy held Mia and chimed in, “Your mama is feeding the culture!” She laughed hysterically at her goofy parents.
And, I realized, my silly song was actually meaningful. What is parenting if not feeding our culture by introducing well-nurtured, thoughtful, socially conscious children into it. Feeding the bread starter every day was going to be one step in the many many steps I was taking to add richness to the routine of our lives—a routine that is the foundation on which Mia builds her future and we build ours. (Not to mention that starters can last a long time, with some people claiming to have 150 year old pioneer era starters!) We might even finally get our religious holidays right… but one step at a time!
“We are raising the culture.”
“We are stirring the culture.”
“We are contaiminating the culture (pretending to pick nose before stirring.)….just kidding!”
“We are feeding the culture.”
And finally, on the eight day, “We are baking the culture.” (Which gave me and Daddy a good laugh.)
The seven days had made about three quarts of culture. From the family that can’t make it through more than four nights of Hanukkah in a row before forgetting to light candles and having to have a blowout candle burning session on night nine to keep from having to face the same candles two years in a row, this was quite a feat! I was more excited about my culture than about any Hanukkah present I’d ever received!
The starter was enough to make four large loaves of bread and have one quart of starter reserved for future batches. A little celtic sea salt and about 15 cups of fresh whole wheat flour later and we had dough. I put it in the warm outside air to rise for the day. About seven hours later, I baked it and we had our first homemade sourdough bread. And we haven’t had a single piece of store bought bread or yeast bread since. Brian says it’s the best bread he’s ever had. I notice that it fills me up more than other bread and I have a huge amount of energy with no bumps in the road during the day! And, my culture is still going!
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