Bread and life

I have a tendency to do everything at breakneck pace. I think fast, speak fast, write fast, decide fast. I’m the turnaround kid, the fixer — at home and at work. Throw a problem at me, and my brain goes into overdrive, and once it starts, it doesn’t easily stop.

That’s why I find myself in bed some nights in that typical tired-but-wired state. I’m not sure it’s physiologically possible or medically sound, but I swear I can feel the adrenaline rushing around my system. Some afternoons when I’ve been writing or editing at warp speed, I actually have the shakes.

So when I need to slow down, take a breather, come back to myself, I turn to bread making. Because if you ever want to learn mindfulness, presence, patience, there’s no need to head to your local ashram. Just roll up your sleeves and take out those most basic elements of cooking: flour, yeast, water, salt. Bread making holds lessons for us all.

I made this, people, with my own two hands.

Bread will not be rushed, you see. It takes time to knead into a silky, elastic dough. It has to rise, and rise again, like Maya Angelou. And there’s nothing you can do to speed that process. And there’s something very comforting about rhythmically pushing out and pulling in the dough until it tells you it’s ready by its texture and bounce.

But if you really want to experience the benefits of this ancient art form, I’ve discovered, make sourdough. Because when you make sourdough, you don’t just make the bread — you make the yeast too, out of nothing more than flour, water, and the yeasts and bacteria in the air. It’s alchemy.

The starter, or biga, which is the bread’s raising agent, takes a minimum of a week to get it to the point when it’s ready — the very opposite of instant gratification — and only then can you get going on the bread. There are plenty of videos and websites that tell you how to do this, but essentially, you start with even weights of flour and water, and leave them to ferment. Once a day, your starter requires your attention — discard some of it, feed it some fresh flour and water, and leave it to ferment some more till it’s bubbly and active.

My first one was a complete flop and useful only as wallpaper glue, so that went down the drain. The second one was a joy to watch developing (I know, I’m odd), but after some more internet research, I managed to get it right, and will quickly run through some tips for anyone considering trying this.

First, get a LARGE jar (there was something of an eruption on one day that could not be contained by the mayonnaise jar I was using). Second, use wholewheat flour, as it’s more nutritious for the lurgies you’re trying to grow. (I used stoneground wholewheat flour watered with the tears of hippies and woven from hemp, peace and love.) Third, use mineral water, as the chlorine in tap water kills the aforementioned lurgies, and finally, put it in a warm, dark place. I popped it into the cupboard above my fridge, and it seemed to be happy there.

Fred, my unprepossessing starter. I love him with a love that is true.

The bread itself is an exercise in patience if ever I found one. Because where normal bread kneads up quite quickly into a nice, pliant ball of dough, sourdough takes that extra bit of elbow grease. Where normal bread dough will need a one-hour prove to double in size, sourdough takes three to four hours — and the second prove takes just as long.

And don’t think you’re going to dive right in when it finally emerges from the oven. I warned you about patience. Sourdough goes gummy if you cut it while it’s warm, so you have to wait for it to cool down to room temperature — which takes another couple of hours.

But oh, the rewards. The smell of warm bread lingers in the house like a blessing. The crust is chewy, the innards soft and pillowy. And when you’ve put so much effort into a loaf, you really appreciate it, savour it, enjoy every morsel of thickly buttered rapture.

I am obsessed. My starter chills in the fridge (#seewhatididthere) for a few days and is then nurtured and coaxed back into action and the process starts again. Every couple of days I wear flour and bits of dough like badges of honour, caring not a jot that I am out in public with smudges on my face, arms, hair.

Because my home is regularly filled with the warmth and comfort of baking bread, and my soul is restored.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling frazzled. Must go and bake some bread.

Bread of life.

PS. If you’ve been following the progress of my list, this allows me to tick off TWO ITEMS! I made a successful sourdough loaf and learnt this skill watching YouTube videos. Huzzah!

 

A tale of two books

The danger of encountering a poet only via social media and snippets of stanzas, is that you never get a sense of what they are really like. And so it was, for me, with Mary Oliver. I’d read one or two poems: Wild Geese, The Summer Day, The Journey, and I liked what I saw. I knew she’d won a Pulitzer, so she must be good, and that was about it.

And so, as I compiled my list of 50 tasks e next year, one was to acquire and read a whole Mary Oliver anthology.

Buying one was the first challenge – not because they’re not readily available, but because, as I’ve learnt, she was very prolific. There are roughly 492 million anthologies available on Amazon. Which meant I had to judge a book by its cover and buy the prettiest one.

I may have let out a small squee when it arrived – I’m a sucker for a hardcover book, and I’d chosen an anthology of anthologies, so to speak: a collection spanning a good chunk of Oliver’s career, chosen by the poet herself. I dived in, and never wanted to emerge into the real world ever again.

I’m not one to analyse literature and poetry. It alternately bores me and enrages me. Just as I believe a good wine is one that you enjoy, a good book or poem, for me, is one I enjoy. There’s no need to eviscerate it. So i read the whole anthology and I fell truly, deeply, madly in love with Oliver’s poems. 

Why? Because they’re accessible and deceptive simple, examining themes of life and death by contemplating the beauty and mystery of the natural world. Oliver reminded me of my yearning to live in a more rural setting, surrounded by fields, forests and/or mountains. She made me want to lie down by still waters and have my soul restored. I devoured every word.

I am so delighted that I now possess that book, and I can see myself, in years and months to come, dipping into it often, and savouring her work.

And now for the second book. All I will say is that I gave it a chance. A second task on my list was to read a work of Proper Literature. Since Hunger had won a Nobel prize in 1920, I felt like it qualified for that classification. 

Ugh. 

It’s about 250 pages and I struggled through 50 of them, finding nothing that appealed to me. I dreaded picking it up, finding much more edifying tasks with ease – examining my belly button for lint, for instance, and clipping my toenails… All of which means one thing: that I now need another work of proper literature to torture myself with.

So I’m tackling my old nemesis, Pride and Prejudice. Maybe I’ll find some merit in it now that I’m older and (allegedly) wiser. Hold me…