Sourdough Quotes

Here’s a thing I believe about people my age: we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted.

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.

The internet: always proving that you're not quite as special as you suspected.

I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice-and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.

Greatest among us are those who can deploy “my friend” to total strangers in a way that is not hollow, but somehow real and deeply felt; those who can make you, within seconds of first contact, believe it.

Baking, by contrast, was solving the same problem over and over again, because every time, the solution was consumed. I mean, really: chewed and digested. Thus, the problem was ongoing. Thus, the problem was perhaps the point.

I felt the disorientation of a generous offer that in no way lines up with anything you want to do: like a promotion to senior alligator wrestling, or an all-expenses paid trip to Gary, Indiana.

He doesn’t seem to mind me taking bits to make bread, and it’s still the best sourdough in town. We just don’t tell anybody about the eating-rats thing.

If you really want to make a friend, go round someone's house with a freshly baked loaf of sourdough bread!

On Sundays Mom invariably ran out of money, which is when she cracked eggs into the skillet over cubes of fried black sourdough bread. It was, I think, the most delicious and eloquent expression of pauperism.

I told them I didn't have time for this bullshit, and if either of them wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it by text message like a normal person.

feeding people is really freakin’ great. There’s nothing better.

I needed a more interesting life. I could start by learning something. I could start with the starter.

Southeastern Michigan is flat, almost concave; here was a world with a z-axis.

my great weakness: if a task was even mildly challenging, any sense of injustice drained away and I simply worked quietly until I was done.

Whenever I hurt myself, my mother says it is the universe’s way of telling me to slow down. She also tells me to put some coconut oil on it. It doesn’t matter what it is. She often hides stones underneath my pillow when I come home for the weekend. The stones are a formula for sweet dreams and clarity. I dig them out from the streets, she tells me what each one is for. My throat hurts, so she grinds black pepper into a spoonful of honey, makes me eat the entire thing. My mother knows how to tie knots like a ship captain, but doesn’t know how I got that sailor mouth. She falls asleep in front of the TV only until I turn it off, shouts, I was watching that! The sourdough she bakes on Friday is older than I am. She sneaks it back and forth across the country when she flies by putting the starter in small containers next to a bag of carrots. They think it’s ranch dressing, she giggles. She makes tea by hand. Nettles, slippery elm, turmeric, cinnamon- my mother is a recipe for warm throats and belly laughs. Once she fell off of a ladder when I was three. She says all she was worried about was my face as I watched her fall.

It felt, also, like an empty spaceship, and, as a rule, you do not enter an empty spaceship without first knowing the fate of the crew.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

He had the sourdough smell of age. His chest sagged into shrivelled teats; his lovemaking was unreliable, yet she found it strangely wholesome in a way that defied sense.

Well... I have this... thing". Saying I have a homicidal sourdough starter sounded much too bizarre.

I know I have strong opinions about everything - I can’t help it, I do - but this one’s the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.

To ferment your own food is to lodge a small but eloquent protest - on behalf of the senses and the microbes - against the homogenization of flavors and food experiences now rolling like a great, undifferentiated lawn across the globe. It is also a declaration of independence from an economy that would much prefer we remain passive consumers of its standardized commodities, rather than creators of idiosyncratic products expressive of ourselves and of the places where we live, because your pale ale or sourdough bread or kimchi is going to taste nothing like mine or anyone else's.

Ironically I am publishing this in the midst of COVID-19, when we all started making sourdough at home and then started protesting police brutality. Suddenly a twelve year old book was actually relevant. Go figure.

IT’S A MESS when strange events smack into the windscreen of a resolutely rational mind.

It's always new and astonishing when it's yours. Infatuation; sex; card tricks.

It's always new and astonishing when it's yours

He felt something on his neck. Warmth. He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he’d seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne’s thick sourdough bread. Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start. The apple trees were flowering. That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn’t dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves. [...] What was happening? Apple trees didn’t blossom twice. Was he going mad? Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff. “Ho, stranger,” Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. “Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?” The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man’s left arm ended in a stump. The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. “No. I’m not lost. Finally. It feels like a great long time since I’ve understood the path before me.

I told him God didn’t invent grocery stores. He told me that I had no proof of this, and wouldn’t I feel stupid when I died and went to heaven and saw God’s Food Mart? I told him that was a dumb name for a grocery store. He told me that I couldn’t do any better. I told him God’s grocery store was named God’s Amazing Food Emporium and that they had weekly specials on the Body Of Christ Sourdough bread loaves. He told me I was sacrilegious. I told him we weren’t any kind of religious.

You are considered a Cheechako if you are new to the state. If you have been in the state for a while , you are considered a sourdough. Sour on the state, but you do not have enough dough to leave.

There had to be a scale somewhere—the scale of stars, the scale of far-off cosmic super-beings—upon which we ourselves, we humans with our cities and bridges and subterranean markets, would look like the lactobacilli and the yeast.

I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend; Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out — yet the Wild must win in the end.

The baker’s skill in managing fermentation, not the type of oven used, is what makes good bread.

It was a fungal party hellscape.

I told them both I didn’t have time for this bullshit, and if anybody wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it via text message like a normal person.

On top of the city with my Loises all around me, I felt a tremor of something. Was it possible? I had become interesting.

The house was large and deeply lived-in, all the shelves and surfaces stacked with books and boxes, framed pictures, old greeting cards set up like tent cities...Every single surface told a story. A long one. With digressions.

Nettie set out a loaf of sourdough bread from Baker's Way Bakers, a wodge of runny Camembert, and a container of leftover lamb, rich with garlic and rosemary, nestled on a bed of spicy arugula from the home garden. She'd plucked two sharp green apples from one of the trees in their tiny orchard, and she placed a waxed bag of caramel shortbread beside them.

The menu charmed me, and as a result, my night, and my life, bent off on a different track.

yeast, which is a fungus, and lactobacillus, a bacteria. They eat flour—its sugars—and poop out acid—thus, sour—

There comes a point in your life when you need to stop eating other people's bread and make your own!

If weeds constantly overrun your garden rows, ask yourself what those are and why they are growing there. Put down the hoe long enough to consider what the weeds are telling you.

Did I see faces? I did not see faces. The power outlet looked like a little dude, but power outlets always look like little dudes.

And even if I fail-this is always the archivist's consolation-perhaps I will have laid a foundation for someone wiser.

In your message, you told me about your family, how you don’t have any traditions. The first time I read that, it made me sad, but then I thought about it for a while and started to feel jealous. Lois, think about it! No one cares if your restaurant has tables. You can build robots, or bake bread, or do something else entirely. You’re unencumbered by culture. You’re... light!

Sourdough? Well, next to the Bible, sourdough is the most important possession on the frontier. You can make flapjacks and biscuits with it, patch a crack in the cabin, treat wounds, and even make brew.

Sourdough causes certain endocrine glands to secrete hormones that affect your feelings and behavior by making you happy. Therefore, it counteracts depression, in turn reducing the stress of depression. Your stress-free life helps you maintain a youthful disposition, both physically and mentally. So, eat lots of sourdough bread! - I'll be honest, I stole a quote about chocolate, but I'm sure it still counts!

Sourdough starters scavenge wild yeasts like Saccharomyces exiguus, Candida milleri, and Candida humilis from the environment, which do not cause vaginal yeast infections (they also scavenge S. cerevisiae). If

On both sides, they've failed us...of course, we know about the industrialists. Their corn syrup and cheese product. Their factory farms ringed by rivers of blood and shit, blazing bonfires of disease barely contained by antibiotic blankets. These are among the most disgusting scenes in the history of this planet... But on the other side...the organic farms, the precious restaurants...these are toy supply chains. 'Farm to table,' they say. Well. When you go from farm to table, you leave a lot of people out...I think more poorly of these people than I do of the industrialists, because they know better. They know it's all broken, and what do they do? They plant vegetables in the backyard.

there’s a part of us which is still yearning for the tales that we were told as children, the ones that shaped us, the ones that taught us the value of imagination. Fairy tales may very well be the greatest of all the tales we’ll ever read; when we’re first given them they seem so simple, so easily recognisable—and as we grow older, we see the darkness behind them, their passions and their horrors.

This isn’t hyperbole, not exactly. Kurume treats tonkotsu like a French country baker treats a sourdough starter—feeding it, regenerating, keeping some small fraction of the original soup alive in perpetuity. Old bones out, new bones in, but the base never changes. The mother of all ramen.

Is it an eggageration to say Clement Soup and Sourdough saved me? At night, instead of fitfully reviewing the day's error while my stomach swam and churned, I... fell asleep. My course steadied. I had taken on ballast in the form of spicy broth and fragrant bread and, maybe, two new friends, or sort-of-friends, or something.

Sourdough begins with a starter, which is also known as a leaven, a chief, a head, a pre-ferment, or my favorite—a mother. There are several different types of starter, depending on the ratio of water to flour, so you may have a loose and sticky starter or a stiff and heavy starter. What I am trying to say is: there is more than one way to begin.

Some lost things are meant to stay that way and it’s best not to go looking. Sometimes the lost things—they look back.

The internet: always proving that you’re not quite as special as you suspected

The loaf had a face. It was an illusion, of course. Jesus Christ in an English muffin. It’s called pareidolia. Humans see faces in everything. Even so, the illusion was

She was on her fifth espresso and seemed finally to have found her equilibrium.

I’ll attach the album. I like some tracks better than others (it gets oonce-y...), but mostly, I’m proud of my brother for making something that’s truly his.

I felt the disorientation of a generous offer that in no way lines up with anything you want to do: like a promotion to senior alligator wrestler, or an all-expenses-paid trip to Gary, Indiana.

I could see why [Candide] appealed to Charlotte Clingstone. It was a rejection of ambition, a blueprint for her small, perfect, human-scale restaurant-- a safe space set apart from the scrum of the world.

Shortly before seven, he made Katie her sourdough toast and coffee, and woke her up with breakfast in bed. The tire shop he managed was closed on Sunday, so this was the only day he could relieve his wife of what would otherwise be a seven-day-a-week job. Taking care of the kids so she could sleep in an hour was, she frequently assured him, so romantic, and so sexy—and on most Sunday nights after the kids went to bed, she showed him exactly how much she appreciated the gesture. But

At General Dexterity, I was contributing to an effort to make repetitive labor obsolete. After a trainer in the Task Acquisition Center taught an arm how to do something, all the arms did it perfectly, forever, In other words, you solved a problem once, and then you moved on to other more interesting things. Baking, by contrast, was solving the same problem over and over again, because every time, the solution was consumed. I mean, really: chewed and digested. Thus, the problem was ongoing. Thus, the problem was perhaps the point.

Compaq Lois spoke. Her voice was not kind or coddling, but stern. “Do you like your job?” My hesitation answered for me. “I know I have strong opinions about everything—I can’t help it, I do—but this one’s the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.” The seriousness of her statement quieted the room.

I grab the nonstick skillet, put it on the stove, and fetch four slices of bread from the breadbox. I've been playing with a new bread recipe, a cross between sourdough and English muffin, baked in a sliceable loaf. Makes fantastic toast, and I've been craving grilled cheese with it since I brought it home yesterday. I literally butter all four slices all the way to each edge, place them butter-side down in the skillet, and top each with a thick slice of American cheese. That way, as the pan slowly heats up, the cheese starts to melt, and by the time the outsides are crunchy and crispy, the cheese is a goo-fest, and nothing gets burnt. And I always make two, because one grilled cheese sandwich is never enough.

Those are the moments I’m proud of. The times I saw through them. The times I made them work to break me, even though I knew they would. The times I questioned the lies being fed to me, though everyone around me believed. I learned early that if everyone around you has their head bowed, their eyes shut tight—keep your eyes open and look around. I’m reflexively suspicious of anyone who stands on a soapbox. Tell me you have the answers and I’ll know you’re trying to sell me something. I’m as wary of certainty as I am of good vibes and positive thinking. They’re delusions that allow you to ignore reality and lay the blame at the feet of those suffering. They just didn’t follow the rules, or think positively enough. They brought it on themselves. I don’t have the answers. Maybe depression’s the natural reaction to a world full of cruelty and pain. But the thing I know about depression is if you want to survive it, you have to train yourself to hold on; when you can see no reason to keep going, you cannot imagine a future worth seeing, you keep moving anyway. That’s not delusion. That’s hope. It’s a muscle you exercise so it’s strong when you need it. You feed it with books and art and dogs who rest their head on your leg, and human connection with people who are genuinely interested and excited; you feed it with growing a tomato and baking sourdough and making a baby laugh and standing at the edge of oceans and feeling a horse’s whiskers on your palm and bear hugs and late-night talks over whiskey and a warm happy sigh on your neck and the unexpected perfect song on the radio, and mushroom trips with a friend who giggles at the way the trees aren’t acting right, and jumping in creeks, and lying in the grass under the stars, and driving with the windows down on a swirly two-lane road. You stock up like a fucking prepper buying tubs of chipped beef and powdered milk and ammo. You stock up so some part of you knows and remembers, even in the dark, all that’s worth saving in this world. It’s comforting to know what happens next. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that no one fucking knows. And it’s terrifying. I don’t dream of a home and a family, a career and financial stability. I dream of living. And my inner voice, defective though it may be, still tells me happiness and peace, belonging and love, all lie just around the next corner, the next city, the next country. Just keep moving and hope the next place will be better. It has to be. Just around the next bend, everything is beautiful. And it breaks my heart.

Sourdough isn't only for bread. Any grain-based baked good- from crackers to waffles, from muffins to pasta, can be made with a wild yeast starter. Why would the home baker want to incorporate sourdough into their regular baking? First, it's an excellent way to use the starter you remove during feedings. Instead of throwing the excess in the trash, add it to your pancake batter or chocolate chip cookies. Second, a sourdough starter is an ecosystem of wild yeasts and beneficial bacteria that work together to add B-vitamins to grains, to break down gluten for better digestion, and to neutralize phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors. In other words, it's good for you. And finally, because sourdough eventually becomes a way of life. Experimenting with different ways of using it is one of the most satisfying aspects of using wild yeast in your kitchen.

Sauté, stirring regularly, the butter, onions, garlic, baby leaves, thyme, a pinch of salt and few grinds of pepper, until the onions are translucent. Meanwhile, remove the cord, membranes, and any clots from the placenta. Rinse it under cold water. Quarter it, set three quarters aside for another use, and add the remaining quarter to the sauté. Remove placenta when it is cooked through. Slice thin and set aside. Continue cooking the onions, stirring regularly, until they become brown.Add wine and simmer until the liquid evaporates and the onions lose their form. Add flour. Mix well. With a low flame, cook, stirring regularly, for 5 minutes. Add water, beef, placenta or chicken stock, and sliced placenta. Simmer for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. To serve: preheat broiler. In oven-friendly serving bowls or pot, cover the hot soup with cubed sourdough bread and the bread with grated cheese. Broil until the cheese melts

Punctuation! We knew it was holy. Every sentence we cherished was sturdy and Biblical in its form, carved somehow by hand-dragged implement or slapped onto sheets by an inky key. For sentences were sculptural, were we the only ones who understood? Sentences were bodies, too, as horny as the flesh-envelopes we wore around the house all day. Erotically enjambed in our loft bed, Clea patrolled my utterances for subject, verb, predicate, as a chef in a five-star kitchen would minister a recipe, insuring that a soufflé or sourdough would rise. A good brave sentence (“I can hardly bear your heel at my nape without roaring”) might jolly Clea to instant climax. We’d rise from the bed giggling, clutching for glasses of cold water that sat in pools of their own sweat on bedside tables. The sentences had liberated our higher orgasms, nothing to sneeze at. Similarly, we were also sure that sentences of the right quality could end this hideous endless war, if only certain standards were adopted at the higher levels. They never would be. All the media trumpeted the Administration’s lousy grammar.

Before them were soups and stews filled with various tubers, roasted venison, long hot loaves of sourdough bread, and rows of honeycakes dripped with raspberry preserve. In a bed of greens lay filleted trout garnished with parsley, and on the side, pickled eel stared forlornly at an urn of cheese, as if hoping to somehow escape back into a river. A swan sat on each table, surrounded by a flock of stuffed partridges, geese, and ducks. Mushrooms were everywhere: broiled in juicy strips, placed atop a bird’s head like a bonnet, or carved in the shape of castles amid moats of gravy. An incredible variety was on display, from puffy white mushrooms the size of Eragon’s fist, to ones he could have mistaken for gnarled bark, to delicate toadstools sliced neatly in half to showcase their blue flesh. Then the centerpiece of the feast was revealed: a gigantic roasted boar, glistening with sauce. At least Eragon thought it was a boar, for the carcass was as large as Snowfire and took six dwarves to carry. The tusks were longer than his forearms, the snout as wide as his head. And the smell, it overwhelmed all others in pungent waves that made his eyes water from their strength.

James and Colleen Simmons, authors of Daniel's Challenge and Original Fast Foods, and owners of LDShealth.ning.com, have this to say on the subject: “The commercial bread-making industry figured out how to isolate strains of yeast that made bread raise very quickly compared to the old-fashion bread-making method; soon sourdough starts became a thing of the past for most of us. What we didn't know when we traded Old-World leavening techniques for quick-rise yeasts, is that not everything in wheat is good for you. In fact, there are several elements in wheat that are down-right problematic and that have led to grain intolerances in about 20 percent of today's population. When you compare what happens to the bread when it is leavened with commercial yeasts versus a good sourdough starter, another story unfolds…. The sourdough starter contains several natural strains of friendly bacteria and yeasts that also cause bread to rise; however, these friendly bacteria also neutralize the harmful effects of the grain. They neutralize phytic acids that otherwise prevent minerals found in the grain from being absorbed properly; they predigest the gluten, and they also neutralize lignans and tanins found in wheat.”1

I make a great fried egg sandwich. Want to try it?" Chloe stared at her with an encouraging smile until Josey finally laughed and nodded. "Okay." "Great!" Chloe put on a pair of disposable gloves, then she took butter and two eggs from the under-the-counter fridge. "Go ahead and take a business card. You can call me here if you want. And the bottom number is my cell." She plopped a pat of butter onto the grill. When the butter melted, she cracked the eggs into it, close enough for their whites to merge. While they sizzled, she buttered two slices of sourdough bread and put them on the grill. "I didn't know this place was called Red's," Josey said, reading the card. Chloe smiled when she thought of her great-grandfather. "Another family tradition. My great-grandfather had red hair. So did my mother." Chloe sprinkled the eggs with salt and pepper and a pinch of dill, then turned them over with her spatula. She flipped the quickly toasting bread too. She'd spent her childhood watching her great-grandfather do this, and here at the shop was the only time she felt him near anymore. "Do you want this for here or to go?" "To go." Chloe sprinkled a little more salt and pepper on the eggs, made sure the yolks had firmed ever so slightly, then topped them with cheese. She let the cheese melt before scooping the eggs up and putting them on the buttered sourdough.

Domenico, my pen pal and the master of ceremonies, emerges from the kitchen in a cobalt suit bearing a plate of bite-sized snacks: ricotta caramel, smoked hake, baby artichoke with shaved bottarga. The first course lands on the table with a wink from Domenico: raw shrimp, raw sheep, and a shower of wild herbs and flowers- an edible landscape of the island. I raise my fork tentatively, expecting the intensity of a mountain flock, but the sheep is amazingly delicate- somehow lighter than the tiny shrimp beside it. The intensity arrives with the next dish, the calf's liver we bought at the market, transformed from a dense purple lobe into an orb of pâté, coated in crushed hazelnuts, surrounded by fruit from the market this morning. The boneless sea anemones come cloaked in crispy semolina and bobbing atop a sticky potato-parsley puree. Bread is fundamental to the island, and S'Apposentu's frequent carb deliveries prove the point: a hulking basket overflowing with half a dozen housemade varieties from thin, crispy breadsticks to a dense sourdough loaf encased in a dark, gently bitter crust. The last savory course, one of Roberto's signature dishes, is the most stunning of all: ravioli stuffed with suckling pig and bathed in a pecorino fondue. This is modernist cooking at its most magnificent: two fundamental flavors of the island (spit-roasted pig and sheep's-milk cheese) cooked down and refined into a few explosive bites. The kind of dish you build a career on.

Soon, things were heating up in the kitchen. The first course was a variation on a French recipe that had been around since Escoffier, Baccala Brandade. Angelina created a silky forcemeat with milk, codfish, olive oil, pepper, and slow-roasted garlic, a drizzle of lemon juice, and a shower of fresh parsley, then served it as a dip with sliced sourdough and warmed pita-bread wedges, paired with glasses of bubbly Prosecco. The second course had been a favorite of her mother's called Angels on Horseback- freshly shucked oysters, wrapped in thin slices of prosciutto, then broiled on slices of herb-buttered bread. When the oysters cooked, they curled up to resemble tiny angels' wings. Angelina accented the freshness of the oyster with a dab of anchovy paste and wasabi on each hors d'oeuvre. She'd loved the Angels since she was a little girl; they were a heavenly mouthful. This was followed by a Caesar salad topped with hot, batter-dipped, deep-fried smelts. Angelina's father used to crunch his way through the small, silvery fish like French fries. Tonight, Angelina arranged them artfully around mounds of Caesar salad on each plate and ushered them out the door. For the fifth course, Angelina had prepared a big pot of her Mediterranean Clam Soup the night before, a lighter version of Manhattan clam chowder. The last two courses were Parmesan-Stuffed Poached Calamari over Linguine in Red Sauce, and the piece de resistance, Broiled Flounder with a Coriander Reduction.

In the white bowl, the paper caught fire, burning like a desperate flower, blooming and dying at the same time. Its scents came on tendrils of smoke, wrapping themselves around me. We missed you. I inhaled, and Victoria's kitchen disappeared around me. It was early morning in the cabin, winter; I could smell the woodstove working to keep the frost at bay. My father had fed the sourdough starter, and the tang of it played off the warm scent of coffee grounds. I could smell my own warmth in the air, rising from the blankets I'd tossed aside. I remembered that morning. It was the first time I ever saw the machine. I must have been three, maybe four years old. I'd woken up and seen my father, standing in the middle of the room, a box in his hands, bright and shiny and magical. I remembered racing across the floor, my bare feet tingling from the chill. What is it, Papa? It's wonderful. I want to know. And he'd put the shiny box aside and lifted me up high and said, You are the most wonderful thing in the world, little lark. The last of the paper crumbled to ash. I stood there, trying to remember what had happened next- but I couldn't. Did my father show me the machine, or did we go outside and chop wood? You'd think I'd remember, but I didn't. What I remembered was how it felt to be held in his arms. To be loved that way, before everything else happened. And in that moment, I felt whole. "Oh," I heard Victoria say, and when I turned to her, her eyes were filled with tears.

One Friday, after a particularly shattering day at the office, in which my code reviews had all come back red with snotty comments, and my manager, Peter, had gently inquired about the pace of my refactoring ("perhaps not sufficiently turbo-charged"), I arrived home in a swirl of angst, with petulance and self-recrimination locked in ritual combat to determine which would ruin my night. On the phone with Beoreg, I ordered my food with a rattling sigh, and when his brother arrived at my door, he carried something different: a more compact tub containing a fiery red broth and not one but two slabs of bread for dipping. "Secret spicy," he whispered. The soup was so hot it burned the frustration out of my, and I went to bed feeling like a fresh plate, scalded and scraped clean.

Kamimura has been whispering all week of a sacred twenty-four-hour ramen spot located on a two-lane highway in Kurume where truckers go for the taste of true ramen. The shop is massive by ramen standards, big enough to fit a few trucks along with those drivers, and in the midafternoon a loose assortment of castaways and road warriors sit slurping their noodles. Near the entrance a thick, sweaty cauldron boils so aggressively that a haze of pork fat hangs over the kitchen like waterfall mist. While few are audacious enough to claim ramen is healthy, tonkotsu enthusiasts love to point out that the collagen in pork bones is great for the skin. "Look at their faces!" says Kamimura. "They're almost seventy years old and not a wrinkle! That's the collagen. Where there is tonkotsu, there is rarely a wrinkle." He's right: the woman wears a faded purple bandana and sad, sunken eyes, but even then she doesn't look a day over fifty. She's stirring a massive cauldron of broth, and I ask her how long it's been simmering for. "Sixty years," she says flatly. This isn't hyperbole, not exactly. Kurume treats tonkotsu like a French country baker treats a sourdough starter- feeding it, regenerating, keeping some small fraction of the original soup alive in perpetuity. Old bones out, new bones in, but the base never changes. The mother of all ramen. Maruboshi Ramen opened in 1958, and you can taste every one of those years in the simple bowl they serve. There is no fancy tare, no double broth, no secret spice or unexpected toppings: just pork bones, noodles, and three generations of constant simmering. The flavor is pig in its purest form, a milky broth with no aromatics or condiments to mitigate the purity of its porcine essence.

The menu is spectacular. Passed hors d'oeuvres include caramelized shallot tartlets topped with Gorgonzola, cubes of crispy pork belly skewered with fresh fig, espresso cups of chilled corn soup topped with spicy popcorn, mini arepas filled with rare skirt steak and chimichurri and pickle onions, and prawn dumplings with a mango serrano salsa. There is a raw bar set up with three kinds of oysters, and a raclette station where we have a whole wheel of the nutty cheese being melted to order, with baby potatoes, chunks of garlic sausage, spears of fresh fennel, lightly pickled Brussels sprouts, and hunks of sourdough bread to pour it over. When we head up for dinner, we will start with a classic Dover sole amandine with a featherlight spinach flan, followed by a choice of seared veal chops or duck breast, both served with creamy polenta, roasted mushrooms, and lacinato kale. Next is a light salad of butter lettuce with a sharp lemon Dijon vinaigrette, then a cheese course with each table receiving a platter of five cheeses with dried fruits and nuts and three kinds of bread, followed by the panna cottas. Then the cake, and coffee and sweets. And at midnight, chorizo tamales served with scrambled eggs, waffle sticks with chicken fingers and spicy maple butter, candied bacon strips, sausage biscuit sandwiches, and vanilla Greek yogurt parfaits with granola and berries on the "breakfast" buffet, plus cheeseburger sliders, mini Chicago hot dogs, little Chinese take-out containers of pork fried rice and spicy sesame noodles, a macaroni-and-cheese bar, and little stuffed pizzas on the "snack food" buffet. There will also be tiny four-ounce milk bottles filled with either vanilla malted milk shakes, root beer floats made with hard root beer, Bloody Marys, or mimosas.

2. Users of bells and whistles such as grapes and milk in their starter vs. flour-and-water minimalists. (Lest you reflexively award moral victory to the purists, note that the grapes side includes such heavy hitters as Nancy Silverton and the man Anthony Bourdain describes as “[God’s] personal bread baker.”) 3. Protective vs. permissive starter parents. (“The California gold rush prospectors made sourdough from whatever they had at hand. River water and whole grain flour. Maybe some old coffee. Hell, throw in some grapes. They fed it whatever they had, however often they could. None of this coddling the sourdough, giving it regular feedings, just the right amount of pablum. You ruin a good sour that way. Turns out to be weak and citified. Doesn’t have the gumption to properly raise a little pancake much less a loaf of bread. Nope.”) .

These crabs, Paige explained, weren’t ordinary civilian crabs, but rock ‘n’ roll royalty crabs, having been passed, via groupies, from the Rolling Stones to Aerosmith to Guns N’ Roses, for decades. It made her feel connected to something larger, a part of history. ‘Like those sourdough starts that were so popular in the seventies,’ I said. ‘Mine was supposedly a direct descendant of one that Alice Waters started in Berkeley.

Bread has been around since it seems the dawn of man.  Well not quite but close. Historians believe bread has been around for 30,000 years. Breads were flat or unleavened until around 12,000 years ago.  This is when the Egyptians used a starter of wild yeast, to leaven the bread. Bread is the most widely consumed food in the world. Man discovered wild wheat and went from a hunter, gatherer to farming community, making the trade of baker, one of the oldest professions in the world. Bread spread from Egypt to all over Europe.

Sourdough Starter Ingredients Organic whole rye flour Raw honey Filtered or spring water (so bacteria-killing chlorine is removed) Mix 3 tablespoons (30 grams) lukewarm water (about 80˚ to 90˚F) with 1 teaspoon raw honey. Add 3 tablespoons (20 grams) rye flour and let this sit in a covered container for 1 to 2 days. The amount of time depends on the ambient temperature. If your kitchen is cool, the organisms will be less active and you’ll need more time. Ideally keep it at around 75˚F (24˚C). An oven with the light or pilot light on works well. If you can maintain an ambient temperature of 75˚F (24˚C), this first phase will probably take a day, which would be the case on your kitchen counter in the summer. If you simply ferment it in a cold kitchen in winter, it will likely take two days. When you pass by the starter, give it a mix with a spoon every now and again: your animals like oxygen in the initial stages. If they are happy, you will begin to see tiny bubbles forming on the surface of the starter as the organisms belch out carbon dioxide. This should occur after 1 or 2 days. At this point, add 3 tablespoons of rye flour, 3 tablespoons of water around 75˚F (24˚C), and 1 teaspoon of honey. Let it sit for 24 hours. Stir occasionally. Discard half the starter. Add 3 tablespoons of rye, 3 tablespoons of water, and 1 teaspoon of honey. Repeat this last step every 24 hours until the starter is bubbly and begins to rise noticeably. Once that happens, usually by day 5 or 6, you can stop adding the honey. The starter might weaken at that point (you’ve removed its sugar fix, after all), but proceed anyway. It will come alive again. When the mixture doubles in volume within 12 hours, you can think about making bread. Here’s the test to see if the starter is ready, after it has risen: carefully remove a bit of it (a tablespoon will do) and place it in a bowl of warm water. If it floats to the surface within a couple of minutes, you’ve got an active starter. If it sinks like a stone and remains under water, let the starter mature for another hour and try again. This whole process might take a week or more, especially in the winter. With my kitchen hovering around 65˚F (18˚C), it took me two weeks to achieve a predictable starter, with feedings every one to two days. Once the starter is bubbly and active, you can switch to whole wheat, or a mixture of equal parts white and whole wheat flour, in place of the rye. You can also increase the volume by using, say, 20 grams of the mature starter and then feeding it with 100 grams flour and 100 grams water.

If the next thing he heard was that a truck full of teddy bears had come to life in San Francisco and had started eating people with a little sourdough bread on the side, he wouldn’t be surprised one little bit.

He is dangerous," Alton said, his voice rough. She parted her lips to refute his claim. His heated gaze studied her mouth. For a moment, she thought he wanted to kiss her. At the dining table. In front of her brother. Cook, who had just entered the dining hall with a tray full of fresh sourdough rolls. And one human prisoner. For one insane moment, she wanted him to. Kiss her.

Snowmachine: A snowmobile in most of the rest of the English-speaking world.  Also a test to see if you are from Alaska, i.e. do you say ‘snowmachine’ or ‘snowmobile’? Sourdough:

Some researchers attribute the increase in gluten intolerance and celiac disease to the fact that modern breads no longer receive a lengthy fermentation. The organic acids produced by the sourdough culture also seem to slow our bodies’ absorption of the sugars in white flour, reducing the dangerous spikes of insulin that refined carbohydrates can cause. (Put another way, a sourdough bread will have a lower “glycemic index” than a bread leavened with yeast.) Lastly, the acids activate an enzyme called phytase, which unlocks many of the minerals that, in a seed, have been carefully locked up (or “chelated”) for the eventual use of the germinating plant. To

Nigra sum sed formosa,

It is genuinely possible to reach the point where you desire broccoli more than fries and wholemeal sourdough more than sliced white bread.

I could start with the starter.

I take the roasting pan of braised chicken thighs with shallots and tomatoes and mushrooms in a white wine Dijon sauce out of the fridge and pop it in the oven to reheat. I dump the celery root potato puree out of its tub and into my slow cooker to gently warm, then grab the asparagus that I steamed yesterday and set it on the counter to take the chill off. I pull the butter lettuce I bought at Whole Foods out and separate the leaves into a bowl, filling it with cool water as I go, and when they are clean, I pop them into my salad spinner and whizz the crap out of them. They go into the big wooden salad bowl I got in Morocco. When dinnertime comes I'll chop the asparagus and add it to the salad along with some tiny baby marinated artichokes, no bigger than olives, toss with a peppery vinaigrette. The sourdough baguette I picked up goes into the table intact; I love to just let guests tear pieces off at the table. The three cheeses I snagged at the cheese counter get set to the side so that they will be appropriately room temp by the time I serve them after dinner. I might not be French, but all those years there have stuck, and I simply cannot have dinner without some cheese after.

She remembered a restaurant she'd gone to in San Francisco, years before. Delfina? That was it. She'd had delicious sourdough bread there, painted with butter. Fragrant, crisp-on-the-outside Saffron Arancini. Bright fresh salad with real oil and good vinegar and fresh cracked pepper.

One major reason I live in Paris is that I can visit Poilâne any time I want. Of all the boulangeries in Paris, Poilâne is certainly the most famous, and if I’m willing to brave the city sidewalks of the Left Bank, my reward is a rustic wedge of their world-famous pain au levain cut from the large loaves of sourdough lined up in the bakery,

Scattered in the foreground were various signifiers of bohemian tranquility: a guitar, a surfboard, a book with VOLTAIRE on the spine. It's always new and astonishing when it’s yours. A market in the Bay Area needs, at minimum, three things. It needs fancy coffee, weird honey, and sourdough bread.

Defense: Microbiome Apricots Arugula Asparagus Bamboo shoots Black beans Black tea Blueberries Bok choy Broccoli Cabbage Camembert cheese Carrots Cauliflower Chamomile tea Chanterelle mushrooms Cherries Chia seeds Chickpeas Chile peppers Coffee Concord grape juice Cranberries Cranberry juice Dark chocolate Eggplant Enoki mushrooms Escarole Fiddleheads Flax seeds Frisee Gouda cheese Green tea Kale Kimchi Kiwifruit Lentils Lion’s mane mushrooms Lychee Maitake mushrooms Mangoes Morel mushrooms Navy beans Nectarines Olive oil (EVOO) Oolong tea Oyster mushrooms Pao cai Parmigiano-Reggiano Peaches Peas Plums Pomegranate juice Porcini mushrooms Pumpernickel bread Pumpkin seeds Puntarelle Radicchio Red wine (Cabernet, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot) Rutabaga Sauerkraut Sesame seeds Shiitake mushrooms Sourdough bread Squid ink Sunflower seeds Tardivo di Treviso Tomatoes Turnips Walnuts White button mushrooms Whole grains Yogurt

EASY SOURDOUGH STARTER Technically, the best sourdough starters are made without commercial yeast, but it’s easier to understand the properties of a sponge if you make an easy one to begin with. This one is simple and reliable. 2 cups potato water (water in which potatoes have been boiled until soft), lukewarm ½ cup rye flour ½ cup whole-wheat flour 1 cup unbleached white flour 2 tsp dry yeast In a 2-quart jar, mix the water, flours, and yeast until smooth. Cover loosely with cheesecloth and let stand in a warm spot, stirring every 24 hours, until bubbly and agreeably sour, usually 4–10 days. Taste it every day to know how it is progressing. When it is ready, store loosely covered in the fridge, refreshing it once a week by throwing away half the starter and adding 1 cup water, 1 cup white flour. Can be used in bread recipes, biscuits, pancakes, even corn bread.

My own psychic burden was that I could command a six-figure salary, yet I did not know how to do anything. Whatever I learned to do in my late twenties, I learned from online tutorials: how to remove mold from a windowsill; slow-cook fish; straighten a cowlick; self-administer a breast exam. Whenever I wrenched a piece of self-assembly furniture into place, or reinforced a loose button, I experienced an unfamiliar and antiquated type of satisfaction. I went so far as to buy a sewing machine, like I was looking for ways to shame myself. I wasn’t alone. Half the programmers I knew between the ages of twenty-two and forty, mostly men, were discovering that their fingers were multipurpose. “It feels so good to do something with my hands,” they said, before launching into monologues about woodworking or home-brewing or baking sourdough.

Between culinary school, a year and a half of apprentice stages all over the world in amazing restaurants, ten years as the personal chef of talk show phenom Maria De Costa, and six years as Patrick's culinary slave, I am nothing if not efficient in the kitchen. I grab eggs, butter, chives, a packet of prosciutto, my favorite nonstick skillet. I crack four eggs, whip them quickly with a bit of cold water, and then use my Microplane grater to grate a flurry of butter into them. I heat my pan, add just a tiny bit more butter to coat the bottom, and let it sizzle while I slice two generous slices off the rustic sourdough loaf I have on the counter and drop them in the toaster. I dump the eggs in the pan, stirring constantly over medium-low heat, making sure they cook slowly and stay in fluffy curds. The toast pops, and I put them on a plate, give them a schmear of butter, and lay two whisper-thin slices of prosciutto on top. The eggs are ready, set perfectly; dry but still soft and succulent, and I slide them out of the pan on top of the toast, and quickly mince some chives to confetti on top. A sprinkle of gray fleur de sel sea salt, a quick grinding of grains of paradise, my favorite African pepper, and I hand the plate to Patrick, who rises from the loveseat to receive it, grabs a fork from the rack on my counter, and heads out of my kitchen toward the dining room. Dumpling followed him, tail wagging, like a small furry acolyte.

Some Danes talk about their dough as if it were their baby, which they feed and care for. Sourdough is basically a gastronomic alternative to The Sims.

we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted.

Or we could try feeding it Slurry,” Jaina Mitra said, and Dr. Klamath nodded gamely. Would the Clement Street starter eat Slurry? Possibly. Would its farts be as fragrant as mine had been? Probably.

They're just bacteria. They don't think or plan. They just...exist.' 'Just exist? They do things we only dream of. They are fecund and potent, they can speak to one another with chemicals and light, they can form teams -- oh, the teams they can form. Millions strong, all working together perfectly. If we could cooperate like that -- if we could even get close-- we would have all of our problems solved.

I shape the dough, all of these boules. The plain Wild Rise sourdough, though nothing about it can be considered plain- it's simply unadorned to spotlight the complex flavors- is left to proof in bannetons, the coiled willow of the basket leaving its distinctive pattern on the crust even after baking. The dark, earthy Farmhouse miche is freestanding boule, nearly four pounds, formed and left on linen 'couches.' I chop ripe pears and knead those into the third dough, along with cardamom and fresh ginger, to make the Spiced Anjou. Tomorrow I'll add a candied pear slice to the top, to bake into the crust- Xavier's idea. And finally the Sweet Chèvre, with its sharp goat cheese and fig filling.