What did we want from sourdough? What do we want still? And were we asking too much of it anyway? MatthewSchneier writes
Photo: Gentl and Hyers Remember sourdough? Almost as soon as the world went into lockdown and everyone turned artisanal survivalist, it seemed to be everywhere: burbling in warm, dark corners; feeding, multiplying, inspiring trend stories and backlash to the trend stories, and choking social media; seducing Jake Gyllenhaal; obsessing an antsy, underoccupied populace. The air seemed palpably tarter, lactobacilli luxuriating in paradise. It was sourdough, sourdough, sourdough.
So what did we want from sourdough? What do we want still? A distraction, an occupation, even a vocation: Suddenly cursed with more time than places to go or things to do, plus the imminent threat just beyond our front doors, we found sourdough-making offered a way to fill the hours, the everyday miracle of turning raw stuff delicious if you were willing to work and to wait.
Nor was flour the only scarce thing. So was yeast. In the first weeks of quarantine, neither love nor money seemed able to turn it up. “One of our yeast members said it was a 600 percent increase on sales year over year,” MacKie said. “You can handle if it’s up 50 percent, 100 percent. But when you’re up 600 percent, it just takes a while to adapt.”
The challenges of sourdough baking alone would be enough to keep the tip line’s dozen or so advice-giving employees busy, but as calls stretched longer and longer — 15, 20 minutes, sometimes more — the King Arthur bakers heard again and again about the world outside the callers’ kitchens. In its way, sourdough uncertainty came to function as a proxy for a more overarching anxiety about the pandemic. “Most of the calls it’s mentioned,” said Amanda Schlarbaum, one of the hotline bakers.
“I wasn’t about to make cupcakes,” she said, when I reached her recently. “For me, going in the kitchen and baking was my act of protest.” And when Willa Pelini, Paola Velez, and Rob Rubba, three D.C.
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