Keeping On
Dear market-attender, website-finder, sourdough enthusiast, researcher,
I frequently find myself in the midst of these conversations while I’m at the farmer’s market:
“I have tried to make a sourdough starter. Once, I did get it to start, but then it died.”
"I make sourdough, but it doesn’t look as beautiful as yours.”
They say that an expert is one who has given 10,000 hours of practice to something. Am I an expert at sourdough, then? I’ve been at the market for three full seasons. That makes twenty-seven weeks multiplied by three years which is eighty-one weeks. Of course, I’ve not been there every week. I have missed a handful, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll use eighty-one as a beginning number. Every farmer’s market week, I spend roughly ten hours with sourdough. That makes 810 hours, and about 4050 loaves. Add to this the many years before beginning Sour’d, and maybe, possibly, I’ve reached the 10,000 hour mark. I don’t know.
This is boring, right? All the numbers. My point is that I’ve been doing this for a long time, and in a bulk fashion. But a lot of other people have been doing it much longer, on a much larger scale.
The beginning of my sourdough journey did not look so beautiful, but I was spurred on by the trying. Every time a loaf came out of the oven, it was like magic. How exactly does flour, water, and salt, become bread? It’s a math equation and a waiting game and a lot of trying again and again. It’s a perseverance, a keeping on.
Sourdough is not easy. It changes with the weather. It flops sometimes. But as with anything else, if you love it, you continue, and along the way, you discover more. You try new things. You find your way.
If you’ve tried to make a starter, but it died, and you like to bake, make another one.
If you make bread, but it doesn’t look as beautiful as mine, take heart. Continue on. Go to the beginning of my Instagram page to see some of my beginnings. They probably look like yours. We’re not all perfect right in the beginning. But fresh bread is delicious.
Keep on.
-Sara
Photo by Daniel Salgado on Unsplash
