SOURED

The first quote in my new Saturday morning journal is something from Amelia Earhart and because Michael left multiple pages between the quotes, I have spent multiple Saturdays on the same story. The story that came forth was one of a woman trying to make a loaf of bread from a sourdough starter she had also created. So, it’s an autobiographical tale. I had left off the previous Saturday with the woman, Amber, eyeing her sourdough starter with suspicion. When I picked up the thread from there, I wrote about coming from a family that didn’t bake loaves of bread. This is true. We baked cakes, cookies and pies. Cornbread and biscuits. Rolls for Thanksgiving dinner. Never loaves of bread. I was raised in the west by people raised in the south. The leavening agent of choice was baking powder or backing soda and yeast sold in tiny square packets. Sourdough was something someone made in the north, on a coast.

I am not genetically predisposed for baking a loaf of sourdough bread.

Yet…I keep trying, tossing my failed attempts into the garbage each week.

As I tossed the latest failed attempt, Michael told me for the thousandth time about how he used to make really good bread. He worked at Subway and Planet Sub in his late teens, early twenties. So he knows how to make corporate bread for the masses. Then he asked if I just wanted him to make me a loaf bread, obviously oblivious and clueless about my motivations for my own attempts at making a loaf of bread. The truth is, I could also make a really good loaf of bread using the very same method Michael would probably use. I too have done this thousands of times. What I have not done, is create a loaf of sourdough bread with a crispy outside and a light, airy inside. I have not produced anything I want to slather with butter and jam or smashed avocado. Not ever. Not with the old starter and for sure not with this new one.

But it doesn’t keep me from trying.

Michael keeps asking me what he can do to help with the things I’ve been worrying about. “What would be easier for you?” is his go-to question. The answer I never give him, the truth, is that what would be easier is not have to answer the question at all. Just step in and take some action. He still hasn’t learned that while I am a very independent woman, it sure is nice to have someone else just step in and do something without having to be asked or told. You see it needs to be done, so you do it. But in all fairness, there is nothing I can do to fix or change or make things easier for myself either. I just have to accept the process and give in to the knowledge that there is nothing I can do.

All this time, while making my sourdough bread, I have meticulously weighed flour and water. I have had complete control over the ingredients, yet no control over the outcome of mixing those things together. And that’s the lesson. Each batch of bread is a reminder that there are only parts of a situation that you have control over. The moment I place the dough into the oven, I loose all control over what kind of loaf of bread it’s going to turn out to be. I just have to wait and see. If it fails, it fails and I just try again maybe with a different recipe or doing more to adjust the temperature of the house to accommodate a better rise. The important part is that I try again. And again. And again. And again. With each attempt, leaning into the unknown, knowing that I made an effort. I carefully weighed and measured.

All that’s left is the wait and see part.

I'M FINE

Last Thursday, I was in the middle of my morning walk with Josephine when I stepped and then rolled on a walnut ball. I twisted my left ankle and fell hard onto the sidewalk, scraping my knee and the palms of my hands. I laid there for a few minutes wondering if I was dead or just broken. Then I carefully peeled my body from the ground and hobbled home. And I treated the day like any other day despite having an ankle the size of a grapefruit and a bloody knee. I went to my chiropractor and literally said to her “I do not have time to take care of my body right now. Pop things together and let’s go.” RICE doesn’t work for someone who finds it impossible to be still.

Now, I have been sitting a lot with my foot propped up. In the evenings, I have been sitting with an ice pack draped over my ankle. I also have not taken Josephine on a morning walk since last Thursday. I am sitting at my desk now and stressing about the number of steps I am not getting today. I hardly ever sit at my desk. I’m mostly always standing because sitting is the new poison. I have an appointment this week for my yearly cholesterol checkup and my doctor is a new intern. I get a new one every two years, but this one didn’t want to authorize blood work before we meet. So I guess we’ll talk about my weight and my sporadic exercise routine. I can show her the lovely shades of purple and blue surrounding my left ankle. I can talk to my doctor about how I’m really trying to incorporate exercise into my daily life even though I’d really like to be taking a nap.

I kind of feel little bit like Artax stuck in the Swamp of Sadness.

About a month ago, I started my own sourdough starter. I had let my old one rot and die in the fridge and since I had already replaced it twice by asking my work friend for some of his, I didn’t feel like I could ask again. Also, I thought that by making my own starter, I might be more vested in taking care of it. Olga. I’ve named her Olga and she looks bubbly and smells ripe. I think it’s working but I have spent the last two weekends testing it out by trying to make a loaf of bread. Both experiments have produced hard dense, discus like structures that are very wet on the inside. To be fair, I never really made a spectacular loaf of bread with the old starter. It was mostly used to make spectacular pizza crust and maybe that’s how I should be testing out Olga. But I just want to get a loaf bread right. This feels like something I should be good at. Wait…this is something I used to be good at. The number of loaves of wheat bread I baked during my 4-H years was equivalent to a bakery and the bread was good. We liked eating the bread. All I can do now is produce lumps of dense dough very similar to the shape of my body.

Lump of my lump.

I get that I have a lot of mental space and energy being spent on other things right now. I have a day job that requires brain power and problem solving. I’m teaching a four week yoga session on building up a strong and healthy plank pose. I’m still teaching chair yoga once a week. I am always thinking about a current family situation and ‘always thinking’ really should translate to ‘always worrying’. Things will settle and be easier…next week…next month…next year. This is what I keep telling myself. I will be able to commit to my own body once some other things are settled. Once I’ve healed.

Or once I’ve made a decent loaf of sourdough bread.

WE MADE DONUTS

Donuts

8 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Donuts"

There’s a guy I work with who has been experimenting with making sourdough bread at home. I have always loved the idea of baking sourdough. It has something to do with my background in microbiology and keeping a living culture of wild yeast growing on my kitchen counter. So I asked the guy at work if I could have some of his starter the next time he had to split his. A week before Thanksgiving, he handed me a recycled jelly jar of sourdough starter. I fed the starter and stuck it in the fridge and then we left for California. When we returned from California, I decided to make my first loaf of sourdough bread. I planned our whole Sunday night diner around this loaf of bread and I was going to bake that bread in my enamel Dutch oven and it was going to be the best loaf of bread I’ve ever made.

It was the worst loaf of bread I’ve ever made.

That loaf of bread came out as a heavy round brick of sourdough. It would have made an excellent bowling ball if it had been perfectly spherical. It didn’t taste bad, but it didn’t taste like anything special either. I know what went wrong, or at least I think I know. We have a kitchen scale that is not very reliable and I had weighed out my ingredients. There was probably too much flour, my starter was not wet enough (sounds gross) and I was impatient. I didn’t give the dough enough time to rise properly. I rushed it so we could have it for dinner that night when I should have made the dough the day before so it would have plenty of rise time. You cannot rush sourdough. Sourdough is a practice of patience.

I continued to feed my starter once week and bought a new container with a breathable lid to store it in. I’d feed it and then shove it back into the far corner of the fridge, uncertain of when or what my next sourdough experiment would be. Then a recipe for sourdough donuts floated into my email. Then I pulled the starter from the fridge and started feeding it. That was Thursday. I fed the starter for two days, leaving it out on the counter until using it on Saturday when I made up the donut dough. The recipe I used said to leave the dough out at room temperature for four to five hours and every hour or so, go in and stretch and punch the dough before placing it in the fridge overnight. In between dinner and wrapping Christmas presents and sips of gin and tonic, I would go and stretch and punch the dough.

The next day, I rolled out the dough and Michael helped me cut out donuts. We placed them on sheet pans to rise for another hour and a half before frying them in hot canola oil. Michael and I tag teamed the frying and sugar coating. He manned the fryer while I dusted finished donuts with confectioners sugar. And it was the most fun we’ve had in the kitchen in a really long time. We were amazed that we were making donuts. Michael kept saying “We’re making donuts!” and then he’d start running through lists of names for our future donut shop. We were both mesmerized by the dough floating in the hot oil. They would puff up with a bubble of air stretching the dough, like making bubbles out of bubblegum. The best part? They were delicious! Crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside.

We made a complete mess of the kitchen. The dog had spots of confectioners sugar all over the top of her head and back (she stood under us the entire time). Michael got inspired by all the frying to slice up and batter zucchini to dunk in the hot oil when we had finished with the donuts. The whole house smelled like hot grease and donuts. It was worth it. I can easily ignore the fact that it took two days to make these donuts and that there’s powdered sugar everywhere simply because we had such a fun time making them.

And no one was burned with hot grease.