As I started a loaf of sourdough this morning and fed the starter in anticipation of a yummy breakfast discard recipe over the weekend my mind wandered to the other people I know who make sourdough. Somehow my brain made a leap and it struck me – making sourdough is similar to having a ‘natural’ birth.
I know, I know, some eyes just rolled. And some people just got really excited and shouted YES!! Because it does sound kind of predictable, very much fits a type or echo chamber in a time obsessed with classifying ourselves and others. But bear with me and we’ll try to hash it out.
Depending on the circles one runs in, both slowly making delicious naturally fermented bread at home and having babies without the aid of pain-relieving medications are having a bit of a moment and amassing lots of new converts despite being the way these things were done for time out of mind until the very recent past. People who do it can have very strong feelings ranging from pride, a profound respect, a concern for health -their own and that of their children, to judgment on those who don’t do it, and yes, even a bit of smugness or elitism.
There is also a distinct camp that does neither of these things, and thinks to do them is kind of silly or even crazy in a stone age kind of way- unnecessarily hard or unpleasant-even dangerous- when modern conveniences render them antiquated. And some truly do not feel capable, even as they are in awe of those who do it.
In the Elephant and Piggie book I’m a Frog! Gerld’s mind is blown when Piggie tells him you can pretend to be something you’re not- she’s pretending to be a frog. “And you can just do that?!... Even grown-up people?” he exclaims, a whole new universe of potential unleashed. I think as a culture we’re having a lot of “wait, you can just do that?!” moments right now and bread making and birthing babies are a few of them.
I’m not here to shame anyone for her birth story or plan. Healthy baby, healthy mama is always the goal! Since our first kid my husband and I’s philosophy has been that the body is designed to do these things, but we sure are thankful for recent medical interventions when needed. We’ve elected to have all four of our babies at the hospital, all ‘natural’ as in vaginal and no epidural though we did induce our most recent for the baby’s sake and needed the NICU, both of which we were deeply thankful for. If we have any more we’ll do the same because once again we appreciate that safety net. But I know people who have had successful home births – both planned and unplanned, had babies at birthing centers, and many who like us have chosen the hospital but sans epidural. In no way is my way is the only or best way. And a lot of women have really strong feelings about birth because it is a truly amazing and incredible process. I have always felt like a badass after.
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| Thank you NICU! |
But I know a young woman with brain cancer who cannot experience active labor because the strain might rupture the tumors in her head. She needed to schedule a C-section before her body went into labor. Thanks be to God for the procedure, because of one she’s got a beautiful one year old boy who is thriving and so is she. There’s also placenta previa, wherein there is literally not an exit path for the babe through the cervix so without intervention mother and baby could both die. There’s preeclampsia and the sheer fact of geometry when a giant baby will not pass through a tiny or narrow pelvis. Or situations where active labor stretches on for days, exhausting and stressing both mother and baby to the point of death or permanent damage. Again, Thank God for epidurals and other interventions and the rest, recharge and assistance they can provide.
But sometime in the not too distant past these interventions just became par for the course. Even as we’ve had our children labor and delivery nurses have been surprised and kind of amazed when we arrive and are ushered through triage that my pain management plan is “just deal with it.” Yes, it does hurt to have a baby. But we can do painful things, and I’ve always appreciated being able to walk pretty soon after delivering. Yes, it is hard and inconvenient to be at the mercy of labor’s timeline which might laugh in the face of your very thoughtful and important-to-you birth plan and muck up the daily or weekly schedule. But maybe we’re not as good at waiting or being patient as we used to be and have a false sense of how much we can control things.
I think making bread is the same. I’ve made bread using yeast in the past in fits and bursts. Over the last year or so I’ve started making our yogurt in an insta-pot and a friend brought me into the fermented drink fold after babysitting her kombucha SCOBY while she was on vacation last summer. Both of these things seemed big and hard and like I didn’t want to mess them up at the start, and like other people do that but am I ‘those people?’ I checked the instructions 50 million times the first few attempts, and nervously looked for signs of my family falling ill from botulism or some other nefarious bacteria after sampling our own kombucha. My three year old especially loves it, and after telling him early on that kombucha is a “sippin’ drink” lest he guzzle it in one swallow he now verifies as he nurses each small glass, “mama, Is bucha a sippin’ drink?”
Even after making these things, sourdough still seemed too hard, too next level and needy, I was not going out of my way to get on that train even as many people I knew did it- I love that! for you... At Christmas time though I was unexpectedly invited onto it when my sister-in-law shared some awesome starter with my father-in-law who passed some on to me. Even then I felt kind of overwhelmed – gah! I wasn’t planning on this! What’s the order of operation? How often do I have to feed it? Do I really have to use distilled water? Which recipe do I follow! So many best practices! I’m tuning out skimming the pages of commentary on it on this homesteading blog!
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| yes, I take pics of bread |
Now about a month into the journey I’m not intimidated anymore. I’ve made relatively few things but find that keeping it small and simple and honestly kind of not paying attention to it helps. The starter can sit in the fridge just fine for a week or so. And the more I think about it and hear about people freezing or drying it and it bouncing back to life when needed I think sourdough might be the primordial life force ha. I mess up and occasionally entirely miss a step or two. But I bake the break and my family and friends happily consume it, often telling me it’s the “best bread EVER!” I feel like a badass.
Just as I am not only good with but very thankful for medical interventions when needed for giving birth, I really appreciate grocery stores. I am glad I don’t have to generate and process all my family’s food supply and as it is February, barely subsist on meager amounts bread from flour ground in our coffee grinder a-la- The Long Winter (I told you I’m a Little House fan.) I don’t make pasta or cheese or keep a diary cow or goat to milk. We don’t keep chickens and we eat a lot of eggs. I don’t even make all our bread. I like being able to buy these things and even get fast food and take-out food sometimes. Once again- my goal is not committing to one of the polarities of helpless dependency v.s. total self-sufficiency. I’d like to strike the balance somewhere between the people in Wall-E and isolated homesteaders who have to generate everything and haven’t seen another human in thirty years.
I realize my current station in life lends itself to being available for a few hours at a time to stretch the dough every thirty minutes. Many will say would be nice, but I work and I don’t have time. But maybe there is time- in the evenings just before bed as you decompress over a movie or show or first thing in the morning on a day off when you’re awake but not stirring from the house yet. Or maybe you can enlist a family member or roommate to help with a few steps- YOU don’t have to do EVERYTHING (talk about challenging control issues!). Maybe some other time just needs to be repurposed and that is a discipline that will need to be developed, and change can be uncomfortable.
As a country there are a lot of feelings around our health and food supply right now- confusion, curiosity, rage, a feeling of helplessness, worries about trade wars and spiking food prices, and more. It seems like everyone knows or is someone dealing with mystery ailments no doc can seem to diagnose or improve, kids seem to have more and more weird stuff going on, and a whole ton of people just feel disconnected from the food source and kind of bleh chugging through life in a not awesome way. We don’t all have to fall under the MAHA banner about it. We don’t have to be beautifully done up Trad Wives or crunchy hippies to care either. This is an everyone thing.
There are also what feels like an increasing number of people dreaming about getting their own little piece of land somewhere and growing their own food, having a go at raising some animals and just feeling closer to the earth. My own family has been gardening for a few years and hopes to take it to the next level this season.
Without sounding like a fatalist and demonizing all modern conveniences or waxing too quixotic about the pastoral life and trying to close the circuit on this long ramble; I think both the exercise of growing or making your own food- specifically something like sourdough that involves time and stages – and giving birth are very human experiences that we’ve recently been more cut off from for various reasons. While I admire and aspire to be more like Ma Ingalls in some respects; I also firmly believe THIS is the day the Lord has made, we were all put in the time and place we were for a reason. We do not need an apocalyptic event and swear off society and modern life to realize some of these connections again.
Just as I will never shame a mom for her birth story or plan I will exuberantly encourage any who thinks I have guide halo for foregoing an epidural that you could probably do it too! Excluding deeply necessary reasons, just a few mentioned above, you might be tougher than you think! And you also might be able to nurture and prepare more of these “alive” foods than you think too.
Piggie is pretending to be a frog but once he wraps his head around the whole concept Gerald decides he’d actually rather pretend to be a cow. So maybe sourdough is not your thing and maybe you lack the uterus, cervix and baby to have a baby “the old fashioned way” [though I maintain my husband has always been an instrumental helper and part of our births]. But maybe your thing is a little counter top herb garden, or making sauerkraut, backyard chickens, or learning how to sew or crochet and making some of your own clothes or household linens. Or possibly screwing around with and maintaining your own swamp cooler or sprinkler system, or collecting and chopping your firewood in the summer for cozy fires the following winter. Maybe going in on buying part of a whole cow or pig with a few friends and having it processed locally. Or even sometimes walking or riding a bike to the store, post office, appointment, coffee shop or whatever when it would be faster and easier to drive.
Basically the only criteria for reestablishing some of these connections to our humanity is do something that is in some way inconvenient or hard and a process that for most of human history people did a little differently than we do today. You might surprise yourself with a latent ability or skill chosen by curiosity, desire or necessity. And I’m pretty sure you’ll feel like a badass, maybe even get a little smug about it.
