FERMENTATION part one (following the Lost Cocktail Months)

It’s been a while, my dear singular reader, since I’ve reported in, and the reason is simple; I decided to fill my empty retirement days inventing cocktails.  It’s not a life-style conducive to a strict regime of writing blogs a couple of times a month.  But all that has changed.  I have a new hobby.

I woke one morning, with the day before me, and a fairly rugged head from experimenting with cocktails made with gin, limoncello, prosecco and grilled thyme, and I thought; I must change my ways; get healthy.  I’m going to take up fermentation. I will start with sourdough. It is how ancient man leavened his breads.  (Well, ancient woman, obviously, as ancient man was sitting around in the bush with his pals chewing sticks and pretending to be hunting.)  I want to get back to a simpler time.  I could feel my chest expanding with the fervor of a self-sufficient pioneering woman.

Apparently commercial yeast has only been available for the last 140 years. Before that we relied on plucking bacteria out of the ether to leaven things.   I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted sourdough with random ether bacteria, but the local Vancouver species are a bust.  They can’t be bothered.  They’re all down at the beach, or at the medical marijuana dispenseries. 

According to google, (ancient woman didn’t have google, I think smugly, so I’m already ahead of the game) you put some flour in some water, cover loosely, let it sit overnight, put some more flour and water in it, cover it loosely, etc, for a week.  After a week you have an enormous bowl of flour and water that smells of baby poo.  Your instructions tell you it should be bubbly and have an attractive sour scent.  You’ve used a whole bag of flour.  You throw it out.

 You consult a different google site.  It tells you to put flour in water, cover loosely, and the next day get rid of most of it and add more flour and water.  Do this for a week.  I should mention that flour and water that has sat out for some time develops a glue like quality that clings to everything; your person, your counter top, your sink, your floor, your utensils.  I read once that Ottomans built the bridge at Mostar using eggs.  They were wasting good breakfast food; they could have used this stuff.  After a week you have a small bowl of something that smells like nail polish remover and baby poo.  You throw it out.  You’ve used another bag of flour.

Your husband mentions that the sourdough bread at Terra Breads is very good, and that’s the bloody limit.  You go buy another bag of flour, a giant bottle of natural spring water, because you now think it’s the water that is the problem…it’s been killing the useful bacteria because it’s full of raccoon piss…and you go to the local homesteading store to buy a proper freeze dried starter.  You quell your feelings of guilt that you’ve given up on nature, but after three days, your flour and water is bubbling and smells lovely…like Terra bread.  You now bake every day.  Every single day...because you can’t think how to stop it.  Sourdough is unrelentingly demanding.  You have to hire a nanny for it if you go away for the weekend.

I woke up this morning and blearily plugged in the kettle, and there was the crock of sourdough, panting, eager, wanting breakfast and wondering what we were going to do today.  Will it be bread? Pancakes? English muffins?  I wanted to throttle it, but I’d only get my hands glued together and spend the morning trying to get them unstuck.  This is where I realized I hadn’t thought this thing through.  Ancient woman had to bake every day, because her large extended ancient family had to eat every day, and ancient grocers hadn’t developed super markets yet, so the only thing available to them was sourdough bread and some shriveled berries, and on a good day, roast raccoon. 

I’ve had my tea now, and I’m going to drag myself back to the kitchen, I’ll make some bread, and squeeze it into the freezer with all the other baked goods, but I confess, I’m looking back at a simpler time, when the only demand on me was gazing at our liquor cabinet and wondering what I could combine with ice and a wedge of lime.