sourdough

Sourdough tragic: How baking with bacteria that smells like baby vomit became obsessive

I made a medical discovery while languishing in Melburnian lockdown – Procrastabaking Syndrome. It’s the addictive attraction of losing yourself in a flurry of flour and baking powder when you are supposed to be working.

Okay, I am still at the pre-trial phase (observational) and my study group is just me – making ‘medical’  a rather liberal use of poetic license – but I stand by my findings.

Curiously, Procrastabaking can affect even those of us who always thought the oven just takes up crucial kitchen real estate, where a perfectly good wine rack could have been.

A Stage 4 lockdown- day can be oppressive

Sure, I have articles to write and job sites to trawl but a woman needs a computer break and, in the very sad absence of our legendary cafes (every procrastinator’s soulful escape place) the need for a break seems ever more persistent.

The desire to leave the house has grown in direct proportion to the number of days we are not allowed to.

So, what to do? There’s only so many times you can launder your face masks and hang them in size order on that cute little wooden pole thingy you made after seeing one on Pinterest (just me?) or rearrange your hand sanitizer bottles in order of label colour and alcohol content.

My talented sister – who has been fermenting, pickling, jam-making, cake-baking and for all I know, distilling her own Poteen since lockdown number one – introduced me to bread making and her sourdough starter, Lexi, gave birth to mine.

Nostalgic pang for the bread van of the ’70s

Who knew sourdough could be so fascinating? I have managed to keep alive the starter I’ve named Billy (after Billy the Breadman from my childhood. He came every few days in a van that wafted the most sensational smells onto the street as he hauled open the clunky doors. We’d run out like starving little waifs and gaze longingly at the haul of cream-filled, sugar-stuffed gorgeousness, and swallowed our disappointment when mum bought sensible sliced loaves and fluffy baps. Now and again the wonderful Billy would throw a few free jam doughnuts into her bag.)

Anyway, my wonderful Billy smells a lot sourer and lives in a fat glass jar. Figuring out how to feed and water him and attempting to master the art of the perfect loaf (I am still at apprentice stage) began as strangely alluring and has become ridiculously obsessive .

To type sourdough into your favourite search engine is to fall headlong into a rabbit hole of websites, You Tube videos and how-to blogs – a sensational cyber movement based around flour and water that comes alive.

For 5000 years people have thrown the two together and waited for the wild yeast and bacteria to burst into life – but 2020’s crazy Covid world has rebirthed it and made it social media sexy. The virus has made it viral.

What to bake, how to knead, where to prove and a zillion pretty pics of everyone else’s baked perfections – it’s all there to trap the easily-snared procrastinator.

Even the ‘starter discard’ that results from feeding the starter, has recipe pages dedicated to it. So, the grandspawn of Lexi feeds me too.

I used to think baking was for the mothers of pre-schoolers. I didn’t own so much as a wooden spoon.

But I have just ordered a fancy mixer and, in the past fortnight I have crafted a delicious brown butter cheesecake and decadent tiramisu via Zoom classes with former Masterchef contestants.

My kitchen smells like Billy the Breadman’s van, and I am filled with contentment, nostalgia and far too much carbs and sugar.

Just as I decide that’s enough empty calories for one pandemic, I am seized by the addict’s post-high depression and the ignominious need to trawl for more ways to feed my habit kicks in.

Procrastabaking Syndrome.  It’s a thing.