Some of you made it to this list by way of my op-ed on sourdough for the New York Times. Welcome! For those who haven’t read the essay, you can find it here (no subscription necessary). An introduction to the piece (along with one of the graphics the design team made for it) is reprinted below, first published in the Times Opinion Saturday newsletter:
What’s in a loaf of bread? Better yet: What IS a loaf of bread? These may seem like inane questions, or questions for the Food section at the very least. But if we look closely, the answers get complicated, and may provide a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world that we live in.
I started baking bread as an angsty 15-year-old and got my first job in a bakery during college. I held different roles in professional kitchens for the next eight years, stalking the inimitable rush brought on by the alchemy of putting something into an oven and seeing what came out.
In that time I developed a fascination with the history and culture of bread, and its soothsaying, barometric capacities. Bread trends over time seemed to foretell deeper cultural shifts: For example, the rise of mass-produced white bread in America dovetailed with the industrialization of the food industry and an atmosphere of xenophobia, during a time when many bakery workers were immigrants. I also found it a uniquely informative illustration of the ways the human experience is distinct but also interconnected: Doppelgänger breads can be found around the world (see the similarities between paratha, buss up shut, roti canai, sabayad, malawach, shou zhua bing — I could go on), comparable in style but shaped and set apart by specific environmental influences (local grains, religious guidelines, cooking surfaces, colonial histories, etc.). I eventually left traditional kitchen work to focus on writing about and baking bread as part of a research and art practice I call Bread on Earth.
It took a global pandemic for many people — Americans, in particular — to wake up to the power of bread. Sourdough (the oldest, and my preferred, method of leavening), especially, was having a moment. More hands than ever were in the dough, and this gave me some hope. People might discover the pleasure and convenience in it for themselves, but I was sure they’d find something more, too. So I did my part to help it along.
In my guest essay for Times Opinion, I tell the story of how and why I sent over 1700 packages of dried sourdough starter through the mail to strangers across the globe during the first few months of the pandemic. But we’ve mercifully, mostly, moved on from the emergency era of Covid-19. So, besides the joy of checking in on extended family, why consider my project now?
An antagonism has re-emerged in our culture that’s reminiscent of the fractious atmosphere of the early pandemic. We bear constant witness to tragedy and division. Isolation, if not literal and mandated as it was years ago, is encouraged emotionally by a political climate where opposite sides sit in intractable defiance. Many of us were compelled to bake our own bread four years ago, when the ground beneath us felt as if it was crumbling. So today, when so much can feel lost once more, we should still look at the bread. Bread tells the stories of the people who make and eat it, and what happens when they can’t.
How to build and use a sourdough starter
If you were one of the recipients of the sourdough and are still baking with it, my inbox is always open for pics!
This essay felt like a small gesture amongst millions of gestures. Like many of us, I’ve been overwhelmed by the magnitude of suffering and division that’s metastasized over the last few months, as Israel's inhumane assault on all Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank marches on. Just yesterday, over 100 Palestinians were killed while trying to access food aid in a "humanitarian corridor" south of Gaza City. IDF soldiers responded to a huge crowd of hungry, unarmed civilians by opening fire on them. Are we to believe these are the necessary casualties of war?
As I wrote in the essay, when people are systematically barred from their food sources they become vulnerable in ways that cascade and overlap. This is not a mistake or unfortunate side effect; it's the point. The killings yesterday are being called "The Bread Massacre" by some, and are just the latest in a series of deadly events that have taken place while Palestinians in Gaza queue for already wildly insufficient food aid.
If we're to seriously consider what bread on earth looks like, the consequences of its withholding must be as central as the pleasures of its abundance.
Now, I’ll take this opportunity to announce a few things:
Bread on Earth was largely on hold for the last two years as I spent the bulk of my time developing an educational and programming department for Sky High Farm, a nonprofit agriculture and arts organization. I left my role there in the fall and am now back in the Bread on Earth driver’s seat full-time, so you can expect more writing, recipes, and big bread thoughts in the coming weeks, months.
I’m renovating the Bread on Earth website,which will return with a focus on a database of global, regional bread types. This is a project for all of us. If you’re interested in doing region-specific research (on a volunteer basis :) ), please respond to this email and let me know. If you have one, a few, or many breads you’d simply like to add to the database, please use this simple form. You don't have to have a personal relationship to the breads you contribute (if you do, that's a bonus). Feel free to share the submission form with anyone you think may be interested. And if you’d like to volunteer your time to help organize the information already uploaded to the database, you can email me about that, too.
I’d quit sending out starter in the last couple years but there’s been a resurgence in interest since the New York Times article came out. I’m going to send out another round, but I’ll now be accepting donations for it to cover some of my costs. If you’d like to receive some: I’m suggesting an $8 donation, which can be sent through Venmo or PayPal. Please include your name and address in a note with the payment.
I have a piece in the show Cum Panis at Le 19, Crac called Making you into what you're made of. An assemblage of 300+ images (most of which can be seen here) and a public fingerprint-for-sourdough exchange.
