Cast your bread upon the weathers?

In a couple of hours, the dough that’s proofing in the refrigerator will be transferred to a cloche and put in the oven to bake. Fresh artisan sourdough bread with leftover homemade bean soup for dinner has lots of appeal on yet another cloudy, snow-showery day. Yesterday I spent some time poking through a sourdough book I got about a year ago, looking for recipes to try this winter. The book is Sourdough by Science, from Karyn Lynn Newman, PhD. I’ve been practicing on the basics: simple boule, crusty boule, and rustic boule for some months and feel ready to try my wings. The recipes I’ve chosen are for San Francisco sourdough, a rye raisin bread, something called slow and easy and something else titled the bomb, plus a demi-miche. Those options ought to keep me busy through the winter and into early spring since I’m guessing each will require more than one attempt. We’ll report back here from time to time about progress or lack thereof.

rustic, artisan sourdough boule

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday we saw the year’s first dark-eyed junco, a sign that winter has indeed arrived. Still no purple or house finches, nor pileated woodpeckers, and cardinals have been absent for several weeks. Maybe the deep cold that’s on the way come the weekend will bring more visitors to the feeders.

I’m not ready to surrender to “cocooning,” but I am more than ready to reclaim my own focus and severely limit intrusions on my attention, even though (especially because?) it’s an election year. I’ve got my phone set so that calls from those not in my contacts go straight to voicemail. Now I’m getting unsolicited texts soliciting support. Those promptly become “delete and report junk.” I wish I could figure out how to bill folks for trying to claim my attention. I have agency and know how to look around for something I want. Not enough folks these days seem to remember Fritz Perls' wonderful Gestalt prayer:

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.

— Fritz Perls, "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim", 1969

I'm happy to close for today with a report that we are making a little progress in bringing a slight semblance of order to ancient household files and long neglected fly fishing gear. As we sort and file and decide what to keep and what not, we constantly keep in mind the observation from China that "The longest journey is started with a single step.”

Flour Is Firm

By Sandra Beasley

The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, line 4234

Baking two parts flour to one part water 

could stop a bullet. So good soldiers 

carried their hardtack over their hearts. 

Break it down with a rifle butt, flood it, 

fry it in pig fat to make hellfire stew.

Gnaw it raw and praise the juice.

Does wheat prepare for this as it grows,

seeking the light in a half-thawed field?

Do stalks know their strength is merely 

in their number? What is ground down

we name flour in promise that it will be 

made useful. Otherwise, it’s just dust. 

Sheet iron crackers. 

Teeth-dullers.

Would you call it starving, if a man dies

with hardtack still tucked in his pocket?

Can you call it food, if the bullet comes only

at the moment he gives in and swallows?

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