1. World of Micro-organisms
"...and life flows on within and without you"
George Harrison
It seems the eternal life-force, the one that allows one organism to gain nutrients from another, is something as mysterious and elusive today as it ever was. Access to food has never been more convenient for people, but is there something we are overlooking, perhaps missing when we purchase and not make our own food?
To witness an unseen life-form like a yeast culture is almost alien at times, yet it has been the staple food process that allowed mankind to flourish into what it is today. We depend on other micro-organisms, both in our breads, cheeses, yogurts and alcohol as well as the trillions of single-celled organisms that live in our gut and allow us to digest our food. Yet something is amiss, we live in an environment that puts these processes out of view, into chemically treated and mass produced products.
I'm not saying this is all bad, in fact it is necessary for our population to have such an industrial system, but leaving all the cooking to other people might mean we are missing something important about our past and our humanity. What is lost when we no longer know how our food is made?
Perhaps we lose a certain idea of being connected, witnessed in the comparison life-forms when eating and cooking food, and instead we see a false reality, one where mankind is independent or self-sufficient from other organisms.
A certainty and unapologetic trust in science and the new improved food of the future can have serious consequence to our health, because never in the history of mankind has our food sources been so altered like this before. Do we lose a compassion for our food when it is just a commodity, not something that nourishes our body and is a result of work and care.
On a side note, art and the Pop Art movement quickly realized this, and a critique on the consumerist mentality visualized in the Campbell's soup series by Andy Warhol and the Warehouse show how disconnected most of us are with the food we eat and how we buy it.
A sensible way of producing food, where one uses their own senses and hands to make food is a way of understanding some of the serious questions that life and the meaning of life ask. In the death of one organism comes the nourishment of another, and to witness this by making a bread culture, or growing your own vegetables, or breaking down a chicken carcass, these are all ways that a person can ponder the great questions of life, through genuine ritual.
2. Feeding Process
What is more convincing is that when you learn more about bread, you understand that the yeast that gets into the flour to make bread, those tiny fungi-related organisms yeast are in the air all the time.
As the yeast mix with the bread starter, it naturally emits gasses as it feeds on the nutrients of the flour and begin the break-down the essential nutrients of the flour, and it all comes out of the breath and air of your surroundings.
A healthy yeast grows in a mixture of flour and warm water, and is naturally antibiotic (kills bacterium and keeps mold from forming). Without yeast, the bread does not ferment and does not gain any of the unique aromas of earthy floral scents that are familiar in a bakery, and it does not have full body flavor (Hint why it is properly called a sourdough).
There are instant yeasts and live cultures to buy, but these are generally used to with the goal produce rise in bread, and do not aid in the fermentation of the bread on a molecular level, obstructing some of the nutrients trapped in the flour. The key to healthy bread is in fact in the growing and live culture of yeast and is something easy to do at home.
To have a bread starter is to have it part of your routine; I feed my starter at least once a day, not unlike caring for a plant that must be watered. It becomes a somewhat intimate task, and positive energies seem to come from the daily feeding of other organisms. It is a beautiful cycle to feed and nourish something that in turn will feed and nourish me.
Michael Pollan on Netflix's mini-series Cooked, explains how essential these yeast organisms were in mankind's early diet. A porridge of flour and water cannot sustain a person, but by making bread with it through the use of yeast cultures, flour and water will sustain and provide nutrients to a person indefinitely.
3. Bread-making as Art
Bread making is a balance of science, practice, and an artistic venture that requires patience and care. Having a yeast bread starter to make sourdough leads to other bread forms. I make my own pizza dough and cinnamon rolls with better confidence and with use of the starter, it seems that understanding the process of bread-making leads to a larger understanding of many things to cook.
An art that predates writing, bread-making with yeast was essential to mankind's growth and through the years it has slowly been overlooked in making bread to this day. I hope to see a revitalization as people learn that there is much more to learn besides the actual making of the food when baking; you learn a lot about life in general when making breads.
For that reason I see bread-making as a similar form of art, it is an art of manipulation and observation in biochemistry, but one that requires a bit of knowledge which has long been passed down through generations and is only learned of through being part of the process and lots of practice.
Happy baking and art-making!