With every breath our lungs fill with spores, microscopic seeds the wind has lifted from the spindly tops of carrots and chives, from fields of dirt, from off the sides of grapes and plums. They survive in zero gravity, in the vacuum of space. Decades stretch into millennia and still they wait, buried deep underground, trapped in narrow crevices of rock. Even ultraviolet radiation fails to kill these spores. The only way to kill them is with heat. Temperatures over 138 degrees Fahrenheit kill off all kinds of yeast; Interesting that it is also fire that, in the end, allows us to finally make use of them.
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Let’s start with a starter. Grab a jar from the cupboard. Not that one, it has to be clear. Start with a fifty-fifty mixture of spelt and white flour, but not that bleached, ultra-processed kind; there’s nothing left alive in there. Rye is an option too, but it’s heavier and I find its flavor to be a bit more pronounced, more earthy. Spelt has more texture, and the bran gives the final product a sort of peppered look. Trust me, you’ll like it, but the choice is yours. It’s always yours. Add water—minerals and additives don’t always play nice with yeast, so distilled would be safest—but you need to learn that there’s nothing safe about bread making, no room for weak strains, or weak bakers. You’re going to fail. You’re going to lie awake at night, wondering where it all went wrong. But eventually, you’ll learn to account for humidity, time, temperature. You’ll learn to feel instead of ask. Make sure you measure in grams—match gram for gram how much flour you have in the jar. One hundred percent hydration is where we start. Good. See how the slurry coats the jar? Now we wait for the yeast to come alive.
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A man baked a 4,500-year-old loaf of bread using the same method we use today, more or less. What I mean is that he baked with 4,500-year-old yeast spores collected from ancient Egyptian pottery. He dripped a few drops of a special liquid into ancient clay baking vessels. Once the liquid flooded the porous pottery, he vacuumed it out with a syringe, taking with it what he hoped were ancient yeast spores. The bread made from those cultivated spores he reported to be sweeter and lighter than any other sourdough he’d made, with a nutty, toasted brown sugar flavor. In order to approximate an Egyptian loaf as closely as possible, he used Einkorn flour. It’s the oldest grain we still have access to and its genetic makeup is nearly the same as what it would have been in Egypt upwards of 10,000 years ago. Its yield is only one fifth of modern wheat, so it has avoided the genetic modification and crossbreeding common to current grains. Our modern yeast can’t stomach such tough grain; it produces weak bubbles and a poor rising. But this ancient yeast is accustomed to working for its meals. As it begins to stir, it craves the wheat it’s accustomed to consuming. With this revived yeast, we could soon taste a replica of the loaves of bread enjoyed by the Egyptians. We’ve resurrected a lost loaf, opened the door to new and exciting flavors that we’ve never experienced before — a grilled cheese sandwich: nutty, sweet Egyptian bread slices, a thick slab of smoked Gouda, paper-thin mortadella laid in ribbons between the bread.
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Reach in and pinch a bit of the mixture between your fingers. It feels slimy and smooth. The grainy texture is gone. The individual bits of wheat have absorbed the water, swollen, and softened. Now separate your fingers. That’s the gluten starting to develop. Without it, bread can’t form its pillowy structure. Now look closely. What do you see? That thin layer of liquid on the surface is called hooch, proof that the yeast is thriving, proof that it is hungry. Feed it every day.
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I feel as if everyone is silently judging me when I head to the checkout aisle of my local bulk foods store with a cartful of plastic, powder-filled bags. The wheat store called; they’re running out of flour. I need spelt and white milled bread flour to feed Bubbles. That’s the name of my sourdough starter. (Leaving it nameless felt disrespectful, like calling out to a loved one, hey you, I need you; entertain me, sustain me, feed me, take me on a journey, wait for me — breathlessly, hungrily, but don’t tell me your name). I need rice flour to coat the banneton, whole wheat for 75-25 white to wheat loaves when I’m feeling confident, dark rye because all life thrives on variety, high protein white bread flour for good gluten development, and Bob’s organic white bread flour to ensure a well-risen, fluffy, full-bodied loaf, and maybe some semolina flour, because someone went to the trouble of milling it and it would be a shame to let it sit there in its bin when all it wants to do is fill the measure of its creation and I can help it, give it a home in a jar, give it a friend, give it purpose.
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The starter is ready. Look at the bubbles forming against the side of the jar. The starter has doubled in volume. Do you smell it, all yeasty and beery? Fill your lungs with it. You’ll grow to love the smell. The yeast and bread-friendly bacteria have finally won out, finally killed off the competing bacteria. All that’s left is lactobacillus and yeast. Dip your finger in the mixture. Touch it to the middle of your tongue. I know you don’t want to, but this is important. Do you taste it? The sharp sourness? That’s the lactic acid created when bacteria eat sugar. Do you understand now why they call it sourdough? Sour cream, buttermilk, yogurt, kefir, it’s all created using the same stuff — bacteria. I know it’s been over a week, but these things take time. We are finally ready to start. Just one more feeding, this time we’ll split the starter into two parts. Make sure to store one part in the fridge for future loaves. Just feed it once a month and it will live indefinitely.
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Ione Christensen, the first female mayor of the Yukon town, Whitehorse, has a sourdough starter that dates back to 1898. I know this because several articles have been published about her in recent years. I stare at childhood pictures of her and her dog Tipsy from the early1930s included in one such article, imagining the glass jar of sourdough bubbling away somewhere in the hand-hewn log cabin in the background. Her mother made fresh sourdough hotcakes nearly every morning in Winter. The next picture shows Ione’s parents dressed in furs, every inch of skin covered by animal pelts except for a band across the eyes and nose. Five foot bent-branch snowshoes stood upright in the snow beside each parent. This is before snowmobiles or plows. The only reliable way to get somewhere was to walk. Either that or keep a dog sled team. Ione traces her Yukon heritage back to her great grandfather, the one who carried her famous starter over the Chilkoot trail and into the Yukon in search of his fortune. Locals labeled the men coming to mine for gold, Stampeders. Smart stampeders carried a lump of sourdough in their flour sacks. As long as they kept that starter alive, and barring any tragedy that deprived them of even the basic flour and water, they could eat all winter. Men who survived their first winter goldmining were called sourdoughs. The last picture of the article is of Ione and a Belgian visitor sharing a plate of fresh-made sourdough waffles, flavorsome history in each bite.
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Notice how over time the levain—that’s what the French call the portion of the starter destined to end up in the loaf of sourdough—creeps toward the rim of the glass. Measure out 250 grams of cool water into a bowl. A glass bowl. Now you’re starting to get it. Scoop out the levain and dissolve it in the water. I know it doesn’t want to dissolve. Do you feel that stringy texture? That’s the gluten. Keep going; you have to work for it. Now the flour. Add 400 grams and stir. Don’t think, just feel. Does the dough need more water? Ok, add a splash more. Now don’t do a thing. Sit there and wait. The flour needs time to swell. Measure out eight grams of salt. Use a pure salt, no anti-clumping additives or iodine supplements; they will slow the formation of gluten strands. Just salt. Now, with wet hands, work the salt into the hydrated dough and knead it.
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St. Vith, Belgium is home to a sourdough museum. It currently contains 106 samples, the oldest verifiable sample being over 100 years, though a sample of a starter from Altamura, a town in Southern Italy, is rumored to date back all the way to the Roman empire It’s curated by a Belgian food scientist/bread enthusiast who travels around the world hunting down old and rare sourdough samples and bringing them back to his lab for DNA analysis. He’s the Indiana Jones of sourdough, running from jealous bakers and customs agents with his newly acquired jar of exotic yeast bubbling away against his chest. He’s visited over 30 countries on his quest to sample and preserve the world’s best sourdough. I’d love to sit down with him over a crusty loaf and talk bread. In my head, the conversation ends with me asking, then begging for a sample or two of his ancient, unique sourdoughs. He is so touched by my passion for sourdough that he takes me under his wing, and I am ushered into the inner circle, the sanctum sanctorum of bread. The tables are scattered with DNA reports and bits of stale bread crust. Covering the walls are collages of maps, dark photographs cut from newspaper articles, and colored string running helter-skelter across it all. “Where are we headed next, I’d ask.”
“There’s a tribe in the Amazon making sourdough from the wild yeast of acai berries. I hope you brought your snake boots.”
I’d lift the legs of my pants. “I’m already wearing them.”
***
Now that you’ve kneaded the dough, let it ferment for a few hours before popping it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, take out the dough and let it sit somewhere warm. You are ready for the final rise. This next bit is easy, but it’s also hard. Don’t touch the dough for 5 or 6 hours. Let it be. Let the yeast inside keep eating and eating and eating until the dough has doubled in size. Now pull out a razor blade. Don’t you keep razor blades in your kitchen? Fine, you can use a sharp knife. Run your blade along the top of the loaf. Feel its firm flesh give way under the sliding motion of your blade. Don’t cut too deep, but don’t be afraid to bury the knife in the spongy surface. The bread needs this. Slip it into the oven at a blistering 450 degrees; you’ll see what I mean.
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The rectangular bread, the wonderful kind they sell at every supermarket, contains over 16 additives—chemicals with names like Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate and Calcium Propionate—reportedly used to maintain freshness and condition the dough. Industrial mixers, paddles, and robotic arms twist and cut the dough into loaf shapes. Conveyor belts carry the dough across the factory to troughs and ovens before being sliced by a row of saw blades and shot into plastic bags. Flour. Salt. Water. That’s all you need to bake a loaf of bread.
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It’s done. I have no idea what the internal temperature is supposed to be. Don’t you dare try and stab it with a thermometer. The loaf is caramel dark. Take it in your hands. Flip it over and strike it with your middle finger. Now strike your chest with a closed fist. Hollow. Both you and the bread share the same sound. That’s how you know it’s done. Run your fingers along the crust. Feel the way the bread has ripped open where you’ve scarred it. Read the words of the bread, read the bumps and edges like braille. Are you ready to cut? It’s like King Solomon and the child, isn’t it? But you get to keep both halves. You’ll need to push harder; the crust isn’t going to give that easily. You need a knife with teeth. The bread is almost translucent, like cloudy ice. The twisted web-like interior gives the illusion of solidity, but the oven’s heat has transformed the internal structure the way that the pressure and heat of volcanoes transform igneous rock into obsidian or how a bolt of lightning can melt sand into glass— heat has made a solid go clear. A good loaf of bread is a geode. On the inside of the hard crust, the interior contents are a relative mystery, each with the promise of unique crystals and hidden caves. How does it taste? No, you tell me. Describe it to me; is it nutty, a bit sweet, or is it deep and salty with a sour punch? The bread is what it wanted to be. You’re its servant. You’re not done, and you won’t ever be. This is just the beginning. Feed your sourdough, and it will feed you. You have friends all over the world. You’re a bread maker now.
Cover image by Janus Sandsgaard.
Brandon Stillwell lives in Utah with his wife and dog. When he’s not cooking or baking, he enjoys spending times in the mountains fishing and hiking.
