Naturally Leavened: what it means to bake sourdough bread

There is a magic to making bread. A magic to watching a dough rise and to taste its sweet, chewy, crackling crust. To see the beautiful uneven texture of an open crumb and smile with delight at the sight. There is a beauty to adding flour to water and watching it bubble and pop with life. To smell a culture of bacteria and yeast come together.

There is a satisfaction to creating something that feeds you body mind and soul. Creating bread is an act of incredible patience. An act of love. You move when the yeast are ready to move, not a moment before or after. Each step is an experience in instincts and body connection as you apply the right pressure, and tug when folding. Creating naturally leavened bread is a conversation with nature. A teamwork some of us seem to have lost with the invention of packaged breads and commercial yeast. You have to get dirty when making bread. You can’t avoid getting the dough on your fingers, feeling the coarse and yet velvet feel of flour in your hands.

Mixing bread happens my hand, not with a wooden spoon but with the hands so you can feel the dough coming together. You can feel the gluten matrix begin to form and you smile with glee. You smile because someone 6,000 years ago decided to bake dough that sat a little too long in the hot sun. Because 6,000 years ago people cultivated wheat and grains for beer and bread. And by getting our hands dirty, we are joining the lineage of millions of bakers across the world. Bold enough, brave enough to work with nature instead of against it.

Bold enough to experiment and devote time to something most don’t think about. A few dollars at the store and you can find a decent loaf of bread without the work, the time and the energy. But at the end of the day you won’t have the same satisfaction, the same sense of knowing and connection that bread making gives you.

I would be lying to you if I told you making naturally leavened bread was an easy task. But I can tell you it’s a lot easier than you think. More than anything it’s a time commitment but an easy one. Most of the time it takes to make naturally leavened bread is waiting for the bread to rise. Splitting up making the actual dough and baking it also helps cut the time a bit. And the longer the bread has a chance to rise the more flavorful and easier to digest it will be.

Although I don’t have my own sourdough recipe (yet), I will include a link to a basic sourdough recipe written by Vanessa Kimbell. The Sourdough school is a wonderful organization and I love the cookbook. I encourage you to checkout your local library for other books on sourdough or bread making. Finding a style that suits you and your needs is an adventure worth taking.

I know sourdough seems likes an almost insurmountable challenge but I promise you it is one of the rewarding and meditative hobbies I practice. Trust your gut, get dirty and make mistakes but know that working with nature to create something beautiful is its own reward.