The Right Amount of Give: Meditations on Gluten

I have a very dear pet that I've never told you about. This pet can almost always make me feel better. It goes to school with me in the fall, and comes back to Kentucky in summer. Unlike Riley, it smells great. Also unlike Riley, it only needs to be fed once a week, though it grows faster than any puppy or little boy.

I am talking, of course, about my sourdough starter.

(WARNING: This post may contain snobby bread jargon. Readers cautioned.)

I first attempted sourdough bread because Eugene, who is from San Francisco, needed a little bit of home to come to him. I read everything I could about yeast and flour and the ideal conditions (not a dorm room, turns out) before I was brave enough to take that First Step.

The first step to making sourdough is very complicated:
1.) put some flour in a jar
2.) add some warm water
3.) let sit.

Even that proved a challenge. I had to throw out four trials because they started to mold and stink. The putrid smell of my first failed attempts filled my tiny dorm room and made it hard to hide the surprise from Eugene. ("Hmm, not sure what that smell is, guess I need to do laundry today..." "Why don't we meet at your room?") Finally, I found success with White Lily bread flour, patience, and luck. It was like that country song about how every failed relationship that broke his heart lead to finding the perfect woman, do you know that song? That's how I felt about my starter. When I finally had a one that grew, smelled right, and wasn't green, I felt such an intense satisfaction that the I was completely hooked on the project. This was MY starter, and damnit I was gonna keep it and feed it, and we would make beautiful warm loaves together and live happily ever after.

(Later Eugene would offer to keep the starter in his fridge, as I was moving to a co-op. I politely declined. Or I might have said "hell no.")

Today I need to make some bread. I've already taken my starter out of the fridge and given it with some extra food. It is happily puffing and bubbling into a springy spongy batter. I carefully set aside a bit of this sponge to go back in its jar for later. To the rest: flour flour flour (and some Other Stuff). I work it in the only way that is satisfying, with my hands. When it can ball up without being too sticky, it's time for my favorite part: kneading the ---- out of it. The way I see it, if at the end of this process there is not flour all over myself and this table, I have failed.

I don't appreciate failure.

My favorite kneading technique is the half turn palm push. I like it because I can put all of my body weight, all my frustrations and frazzled energy, directly into the dough, and still keep it balled up completely under my hands. Sometimes the dough pops, which is pretty satisfying. I know this loaf is going to fluffy and soft.

F--- these things which I am frustrated with, which I will now transfer to this innocent loaf:
-the rigidity of con requirements (I had a better phrase for that, instead I pound my phrase into the dough. Take that! The table hits the wall with a thunk)
-uninspired job-track orchestra players
-all the math I have to learn next semester
-complicated relationships
-drama
-job resumes and recommendations
-going through the motions

This dough did not stand a chance. I roll my palm forward decisively. I slam the dough down with confidence. I punch it down again with a brash whoop of triumph. With assurance and bravado I sling flour across the table and roll pound chop until the dough is soft and pliable with just the right amount of give. My fingers know when the dough is done before I do. There's a moment, as you're working the dough, when the consistency changes from tough and resistant to perfectly pliant and cooperative. I pinch a piece and demonstrate yet another therapeutic thing about bread making: the predictability. I know that if I stretch this piece of dough out thin enough to see light through it, and it doesn't break, it is ready to rise. Every time. It stretches-it's ready. Professor Darling says its got something to do with stretching chains of gluten molecules, something like that. I like to think that if you just massage the dough long enough it is coaxed into stretchy supple submission.

There are a few things that could make this more perfect, of course. For one, Danny Kaye could be alive in my kitchen, wearing Grammy's green apron and doing impressions of my least favorite professors. While I'm dreaming, Chris Thile can come over and put those nimble fingers to good use kneading the knots out of my shoulders, crooning mountain ballads in my ears.

Almost perfect.

--MANY HOURS LATER--

So guess who forgot that there was dough rising, and let it quadruple in size? Guess who was looking for things to do three hours ago (coincidentally exactly when the bread should have gone in the oven) and now would like nothing better than to sleep? Guess who shot up in bed and dashed to the kitchen in horror?

Yeah, that would be me.

Oops.

So I forgot about the bread. I think I just wanted to knead it anyways, I'm not really hungry. Still, if I kneaded it I want to bake it, damnit! I'm going to try anyways. This could have several consequences:
-I do not get enough sleep tonight.
-The bread is too sour OR
-the bread takes on a new concentrated sour flavor unlike any loaf I've ever made, and this becomes my new recipe. (hopefully this one)
-Mama stumbles into the kitchen for water, sees me still awake, and makes fun of me for forgetting the bread.
-I fall asleep at the kitchen table and burn the house down.

I'm trying to avoid that last one by writing to you.

APPROXIMATELY THIRTY SEVEN MINUTES TWENTY SECONDS LATER
it is ready. I knocked on the bottom: perfectly hollow. Pressed on the crust: perfectly firm, bubbly yet smooth (it will be chewy). I can tell, the way it popped open and spread out like a lily that it's going to be soft and fluffy inside. It smells like heaven. I wish I could share it with you. No one is even awake to appreciate it right now.

Why am I still awake?

Goodnight.
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Simple Pleasures:
-Billy Joel's 'The Stranger' on vinyl
-black coffee
-blooming orchids
-bread making