Getting Serious

You have them too, right? In case I lost you there, I’m talking about obsessions. Mine are many, spread wide and varied. From pottery to Miyazaki films, passing through Japanese knives, fishing, bonsai trees, Joanna Newsom and of course food. I guess I can safely say I’m not afflicted with tunnel vision. At school, I was never interested in learning anything, but now, I can’t let a day go by without trying to improve. Maybe that relentless urge for self-improvement is in itself an obsession, or maybe it’s the weather or something like that, but the urge doesn’t stop. My latest? Bread.

I’ve been making bread for a while now, as you would know. Last week I turned this hobby into an obsession through the simple act of buying a 5kg bag of organic wholewheat flour from the organic coop in Katoomba. I am now nurturing a young sourdough starter, purely wholemeal, fed by the juice of organic oranges. This starter is what we, humans, used to use in days of yore, before the isolation of baker’s yeast. The natural micro-organisms in my starter are those who arrived on the mother ship, the wheat grain itself, and possibly some are from the orange juice. These guys are alive and kicking, and in a month or even less, I will not need any commercial yeast to give my bread the push it needs. At day 5, my sourdough starter is dark and handsome and has a bubbly personality. Two more days and a semi-leavened loaf might be my first reward.