Sourdoughn’t You Want Some?
And other jokes that I hope get a rise out of you
I write our annual Christmas card. And this past year, I sort of jokingly wrote that I had started making sourdough (true) and had made it my whole personality (exaggeration).1
But I had, at that time, really only scratched the surface (er, crust?) of what a sourdough-based personality could be. I had my go-to basic sourdough loaf2 that I made most weeks. I had made some exceptionally claggy sourdough discard lemon muffins. I had made homemade crackers. I had made sourdough discard waffles (honestly amazing, but it’s very stressful to have to weigh ingredients for waffles while your husband who prefers pancakes3 is right there noting4 that the Krusteaz pancakes would already be done by now). Oh! And I had made sourdough pizza crust and aggressively set off the smoke alarm doing so.5
See, there is currently something called, “My viral croissant sourdough loaf,” and after seeing a handful of people making it, I decided that God made flour and butter and a full four days so that people could experience a sourdough croissant loaf and perhaps I was the instrument of his will in the world.
Honestly, it slapped. It was like a sourdough-biscuit-croissant, which is to say, buttery and flaky and airy in all the right ways. Different from sourdough. Definitely not an every day bread. But amazing.
So then I tried the variation: “pain du chocolat” style sourdough.6 It slappped, too. You can tell, because I married a midwesterner who embraces the Julia Child attitude that you can never have too much butter. And he did not need butter on the pain du chocolat sourdough.
Throughout this process, I had to confront my fears of what is a levain and why does this recipe take three full days and oh, I guess actually four because I think other people are making sourdough in warmer houses,7 which should gross us all out.
But also, it is an amazing feeling to really put some effort into a complicated recipe and make something that is popular on the internet. Like how often in life can you say, “I really tried and look at the fruit of my labor!” And in the same breath know that actually, “viral” is a word that has a lot of different connotations and maybe it is only viral in the “online sourdough community,” which is a place you haven’t really spent a lot of time because the idea of sourdough discard breakfast pizza is horrifying to you.
But if the online sourdough community were like the Girl Scouts,8 then I think I would have earned the “viral internet recipe” badge.
Of course, this is not the Girl Scouts and there is no badge and no vest to wear the badge on. There is only the scale, which confirms that there is in fact an entire stick of butter in the viral sourdough croissant loaf. And somewhere in there, after not doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, or the Cinnamon Challenge, or even a single TikTok dance, I think the Internet is glad to welcome me into its viral trend arms. And I am very worried that those arms are going to be a warm place where yeast thrives.
Obviously my personality is multifaceted like every face on a really big and elaborately cut gemstone. It dazzles like a sequin. (Footnote to the footnote: did you know that that’s what “spangle” means? The national anthem is basically like “our sparkly stars-and-sequins-banner.” lol, very fabulous.) Anyway. The idea that my personality would be countertop yeast fermented into an airy crumb and a chewy crust is, I don’t know, not intuitive.
The recipe makes two loaves of bread, but it’s the same loaf, so I felt like it was a lie to say “my go-to basic sourdough loaves.”
Weirdly, this is becoming a common refrain in Alexandra’s America.
My husband is obviously too polite and midwestern to actually, like, say that. But I can tell when a hover is a passive-aggressive “I told you so” hover, and, well, sourdough discard waffles had that hover.
It’s horrifying to set off a smoke alarm by cooking in your house. Everyone has set off the smoke alarm cooking in an apartment, because apartments are rented and landlords know that tenants are idiots and so they have really overreactive smoke alarms so you actually cannot cook bacon or light an apple cinnamon candle without setting it off. But houses are for grown-ups. And grown-ups are supposed to be able to cook without setting off the smoke alarm. And it is a whole new thing to try to figure out how to turn off the alarm before the fire department shows up at your house, because even though that would be an amazing day for your toddler, it would be a bad day for you.
I have decided to call it “sourdough du chocolat.” And even though that’s more descriptive and correct, what I really want to call it is “pain du sourdough.” Which means “Frenchy bread of sourdough.” And like, oui.
As a Colorado native, I am horrified by the idea of moisture in the air. Warm, moist air growing stuff from yeasty starter? Nightmares.
I was never a Girl Scout, so maybe I’m way off here.