I often hear it in my voice, talking about bread. The proselytizing tone when I evangelize about its value to civilization, its symbolic meaning (“I am the bread of life,” quoth Jesus in John 6:35. “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger …”), its ability to create connections and community (“Let us break bread!”), its elemental simplicity (“Flour, water, salt! What more do you need to make a meal?”)
They’re all true, yes. But the minute I hear my high and mighty voice, my fire and brimstone speechifying, I try to bring it down a notch or few: “Hey! Bread is bread!” I say, trying to undercut my note of pretension.
Bread is magic, but it’s also humble, unassuming, unpretentious, simplicity itself.
Simplicity itself
I get my hackles up whenever I hear that holier-than-thou tone in others.
And I certainly felt that way when I first came across the recent New York Times article by Lexie Smith, “What Sourdough Taught Me, in the Pandemic and Beyond.” 1
But the piece had an original twist and produced some fascinating insights I’d not considered. She brought it home with flying colours in this eloquent, beautifully laid out piece.
I’ve mentioned Lexie Smith in this blog space before. She has bona fide baking credentials but is also a great writer. 2. Moreover, she has a striking appearance and bona fide modelling experience.
Starting up with starter
Her twist here is that instead of baking bread and selling or giving it to people, she mailed nearly 2,000 samples of dried sourdough starter to people worldwide.
During the COVID pandemic, she offered her dried starter (Barthelme) to anyone who requested it. Her Instagram account, @smyth_myth, had legions of followers, and they responded when she offered.
Sourdough was trending,” she writes. “As a dealer, so was I. The following year, I sent over 1,700 packets of dried sourdough starter — most dehydrated in my oven on endless parchment-lined sheet trays, with a handful produced by volunteers — to recipients in 46 states and 36 countries.”
Her gesture struck a chord, borne by the theory that people sought comfort in making (and eating) bread during this time.
Presumably, Smith included instructions on how to reconstitute the dried sourdough starter. Recipients bring the starter to life and the starter is fed and replenished. Then used to make bread.
Spreading lactobacillus
It occurred to Smith that bits of her sourdough starter — including the free-floating yeast spores from her kitchen and hands — were making more than insensate loaves.
“Lactobacillus spores (one of the dominant bacteria found in sourdough cultures) are present on the bakers’ hands after a few weeks of consistent breadmaking.”
Something of herself was in all the loaves made with her starter. Talk about spreading the love!
“It’s hard to resist the cozy thought of nearly 2,000 of Barthelme’s children scattered across a fractured and disconsolate globe. Especially when I consider they’re working to unite our bodies on an imperceptible scale.”
But Smith brings her poetic bread thoughts down to earth. And here’s value of the New York Times piece.
Getting real
Bread has been a linchpin throughout history in world conflicts and uprisings. When governments tried to cut bread subsidies in the Middle East, the citizens revolted. When Marie Antoinette (the last queen of France before the French Revolution) learned the peasants had no bread to eat, she uttered, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” — “Let them eat cake!” The French Revolution followed. 3.
Bread is still a linchpin in conflicts today. We’re seeing this in Syria, Ukraine and, most recently, Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have damaged large numbers of bakeries.
In early November, bakeries in northern Gaza’s most densely populated regions were closed. Infrastructure damage, lack of fuel and ingredients, or fear of further attacks drove away bakers and citizens.
Bread is a bellwether
“Bread is a bellwether,” writes Smith. “Its absence a death knell. In the corners of the world where bread flows freely and remains affordable for every rung of society, there is at least the potential for people to thrive.”
Lexie Smith’s sourdough starter project brought some relief to hundreds during the pandemic. The responses suggested “a desire to connect and nourish, along with the sincere hope that feeding and eating this [sourdough culture] might offer some small cure to a huge problem.”
Is sourdough a solution to world strife?
“Of course not,” writes Smith.
“But if Barthelme’s spores still bubbling away in kitchens around the world can tell us anything, it’s that it’s within our nature … to reach out to one another and give bits of ourselves away. There is still, and there is always, something to be done with what you have right here, in and on your hands.”
A new outlook for the Happy Monk Baking Company, a shift of focus from oven-to-home bread delivery to the community of the Pender Island Farmers Market [ See Link in Profile ]
Jan 29
![A new outlook for the Happy Monk Baking Company, a shift of focus from oven-to-home bread delivery to the community of the Pender Island Farmers Market [ See Link in Profile ]](https://i0.wp.com/happymonkbaking.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png?w=980&ssl=1)
A bread-fail last week produced great-tasting Sesame-Miso Frisbees or Umami Chapeaus! What to do with the remnants? Hard-bread, rusks, croutons, or what have you. And the Ravens get their fair share, too … O come to me Huginn and Munnin! Fill your beaks and carry my greetings and blessings to Odin! [ See link in my LinkTree in HappyMonk Profile ]
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#showusyourfuckedloaves, #sesamemiso, #sesamemiso, #sesamemisobread, #hardtack, #hardbread, #croutons, #huginnandmunnin, #odin, #penderisland, #southpenderisland, #happymonkbaking, #southerngulfislands|
Jul 21
Latest Happy Monk Blog: The World is Too Much With Us - In our little Island paradise, how to embrace all the beauty when the world is going to hell in a hand basket? ALSO: Baker`s Choice - Brown-Rice Miso and Sesame Sourdough [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Jul 17
Latest Happy Monk Blog: "A Bird Came Down the Walk," a brief flirtation with ChatGPT that was awkward but offered an exquisite poem by Emily Dickinson. [See LinkTree in Profile ]
Jul 3
Resurrected a couple of Salish Sourdough loaves forgotten inside Mildrith, the wood-fired oven. They emerged charred and hell-fired, sadly, so I took a knife to them and made them almost new again!
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#woodfired #woodfiredoven #coboven #Mildrith #Mildriththeoven #woodfiredovenbread #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #burntbread #showusyourfuckedloaves
Jun 9
Strongly recommend installing the Smell-O-Vision™ feature on your device to appreciate the aroma of these Rye-Currant Sourdough loaves, just out of the oven. Wish I could capture it in a jar, or make a scratch ‘n’ sniff postage stamp (like the recent French stamp commemorating the baguette). And this loaf tastes just as lovely as they look!
Jun 1
The Happy Monk Baking Company
Happy Monk Tidings - May 15, 2024 🍞 - BLOG REDUX: "Saving Grace"; BAKER`S CHOICE: Sprouted Purple Barley Sourdough; REGULAR: Seed Feast.
May 15
It’s late at night and chances are there’s a baker near you having fun with bread dough …
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#bakers #bakerslife #bakersofinstagram #bakerslifeforme #nighttime #nightlife #nightsky #bakingmagic
May 5
All spelt, all the time … well, with a few glugs of maple syrup
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#spelt #wholegrain #tinloaves #realbread #breadbakers #breadbakersofinstagram
#artisanbreadbakers #speltbread #speltsourdoughbread #speltbread #wholegrainspeltbread #penderisland #southpenderisland #happymonkbaking #happymonkbaker
Apr 20
New Happy Monk Blog: Spring brings mixed blessings! A sense of loss, along with warmth and a new cast of light, "That Science cannot overtake / But Human Nature Feels." Westeros and Emily Dickinson`s sensitive heart. [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Apr 3
This little guy is a workhorse, plain and simple. A brute! Thursday, it milled over 27kg of incredible flour for a recipe that needed the freshest flour possible. And its output was beautiful. Wheat, spelt, rye and buckwheat. A larger mill could have handled that in a fraction of the time, but who’s complaining? Some amazing bread was the result, milled and mixed the same day. A Country Miche from an article by Eric Pallant @epallant in the Winter/Spring 2023 issue of Bread Lines.
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#spelt #speltbread #buckwheat #buckwheatbread #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #naturallyleavened #artisanbread #realbread #rusticbread #flourmilling #flourmill #komoflourmills #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands
Mar 2
Latest Happy Monk Blog - The Living Rock Island – Our Little Corner of South Pender Island 🍞 [See LinkTree in Profile]
Feb 28
O, for a slice of raisin sourdough! that hath been
Warm’d a long age in the deep delvéd oven,
Tasting of Hestia and the ocean green,
Rest and a slow moving song and sunburnt mirth!
O for a loaf full of the warm South
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded raisins winking at the crumb,
And cinnamon-stainéd mouth;
That I might eat, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.
— Apologies to John Keats for my butchery of his “Ode to a Nightingale”
Feb 25
At the outset of the Happy Monk Baking Company, I cherished those early mornings, working alone with Mildrith in the dark before the birds began their glorious morning chorus. The world was silent, unhurried. Mildrith and me, the trees, the solid earth, a passing deer, the baskets of bread dough waiting for the oven.
Going to work in the pre-dawn hours was something bakers did, I thought. They sacrificed sleep and delivered their bread early to appreciative customers. It was a romantic notion on my part, a naïve commitment to the baking trade without fully understanding the consequences, i.e. sleep debt.
It was satisfying to have loaves ready for some customers before noon; it was a triumph! But by the time most of the bread was ready for delivery, bagged and labelled, my eyelids were growing heavy, my mind fuzzy, my body slowing down.
And it wasn’t safe driving up-island.
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#bakerslife #bakers #sleepdeprivation #woodfired #woodfiredoven #woodfiredovenbread #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #happymonkbakery #happymonkbakingcompany
Feb 1
Milling a little corn to mix in with some marinated olives before they go into a tapenade infused dough. Big olive flavour … plus a rare shot of Mildrith, the wood-fired oven!
Nov 19
Happy Monk Tidings - November 15, 2023 BAKER`S CHOICE this week: Olive Sourdough Loaf; AND: An Emotional Weather Report [ See LinkTree in Profile ] 🍞
Nov 15
Happy Monk Tidings - November 1, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE: Sourdough Sandwich Loaf; BLOG: Don`t Let That Wonder Lawyer Tell You It`s Not Real Bread! [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Nov 1
Dylan Thomas, one of my muses, would have been 109 years old this Friday, Oct. 27. One of a small-handful of poets whose words are cherished and summoned often for their music and wisdom. They soothe, they sing, they evoke. I`ll be thinking of him this bread day, under "the mustardseed sun"….. and the "switchback sea"…. as he "celebrates and spurns his driftwood thirty fifth wind turned age."
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#dylanthomas #poetsofinstagram #poetrylovers #poetryisnotdead #poetryofinstagram #poets #poetryislife #poetrylove #poetrydaily #poetryworld #poetryinstagram #bakerpoets #poetryforbakers #southpenderisland #penderisland
Happy Monk Tidings - October 25, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE - Sprouted Emmer Sourdough; BLOG: Happy Birthday, Dylan Thomas! [See LinkTree in Profile ]
Oct 25
Happy Monk Tidings - October 18, 2023 - 🍞: BAKER`s CHOICE: Seedy Spelt and Rye Bread; BLOG: It Starts With Wonder? What`s That?
Oct 18
Happy Monk Tidings - October 11, 2023 BAKER`S CHOICE: Potato Rosemary Bread; BLOG: Swimming with Otters 🍞
Oct 11
Happy Monk Tidings - BLOG: Abundance: Season of Apples; Baker`s Choice: Pender Island Apple Bread with Pender Apples and Twin Island Cider - October 4, 2023 🍞 [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Oct 4
Happy Monk Tidings - September 27, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE THIS WEEK: Harvest Bread; BLOG: Positively Fourth Avenue - [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Sep 27
Happy Monk Tidings - September 20, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE: Garlic Levain Bread; BLOG: Harumph! Author Says Leave the Baking to the Professionals! [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Sep 20
A hefty Country Miche, formula from Breadlines published by Bread Bakers Guild of America. Hefty in size, hefty in flavour. Four flours (Sifted Metchosin Wheat, Rye, Buckwheat, Spelt), a super-active levain and an intense crust colour. I think I’m addicted! It’s kind of finicky, though, and trying to work out a reasonable schedule to produce 40 loaves for Happy Monk customers.
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. #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #happymonkbakingcompany #wholegrainbread #breadhead #michebread #realbread #rusticbread #southerngulfislands #southerngulfislandsbakers #southerngulfislandsbakeries
Sep 14
Originally appeared in the online NYT, Feb. 16, 2024)↩
Read some of her words in my May 2021 blog post, “Dreams About Bread”↩
This article in Wikipedia suggests that Antoinette may not have actually spoken these callous words and that they were coined years before by the French writer, philosopher and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau↩