THE WORLD NEEDS CAREFUL BAKERS
Photo courtesy of the author.
Cutting into a loaf of fresh sourdough bread at a table among loved ones offers an incomparable joy. The steam rolls out of the bread as the knife descends, filling the room with an aroma that welcomes everyone home. I started baking traditionally leavened bread six or seven years ago, and those tiny revelations through the constant practice of care still take me by surprise. Traditionally leavened bread (or sourdough bread) is made from a constantly fermenting mixture of flour and water called starter. Unlike the packet of Fleischmann’s at the grocery, sourdough starter is a diverse community of bacteria and yeast. Just like any community, this starter needs food, care, and attention to bring forth its transformative gifts.
So, when I bake bread, it starts with caring for the starter. I feed it fresh flour and water just about every evening until two days before I mix the bread dough, increasing the frequency to twice daily to encourage more activity in the starter community. On baking day, I mix the leaven early in the morning and wait for it to reach its peak, meanwhile turning to other needs. The dog needs to relieve himself and have breakfast, the baby needs a good morning kiss and a diaper change, and my wife needs a cup of coffee. Maybe the lawn needs mowing or the trash needs taking out, or maybe we need a few items from the farmer’s market. All the while, I can never neglect to attend to the leaven as it grows into a community ready to offer itself to the dough and become both utterly changed and warmly familiar.
When it is time to mix the bread dough, it’s not that different from feeding the starter. Just mix together the flour, water, and leaven. Most bread books originating from the West Coast claim that adding small amounts of leaven is the only proper way. While I appreciate their confidence, East Coast breads traditionally have more leaven, giving them a more present tang in flavor. As a proud North Carolinian, I add a few more grams of leaven to my breads. Wait about thirty minutes before adding the salt; this allows the water to hydrate the flour and offers plenty of time to make some lunch, clean the bathroom, or whatever else needs care at the moment. Then, just add the salt and bring it all together, fold the dough periodically, and let it rise before shaping the dough into a loaf. After proofing the dough overnight comes placing it in its culinary tomb and waiting for it to grace us with its simple and profound presence as bread.
It is this practice of caring for a sourdough starter and attending to a loaf of bread that made me reread the parable of the leaven (Matthew 13.33/Luke 13.20-21). I had grown up with an interpretation involving the deceptively hopeful claim that the kingdom of heaven will come about without much human effort. Just like the yeast that is working hard to leaven the bread, God will bring about the kingdom. Scholars Amy-Jill Levine and Klyne R. Snodgrass have rightly highlighted that the leaven in this parable is more like a sourdough starter than the dehydrated yeast from the grocery store. Dry active yeast was first developed in WWII to offer soldiers the ability to have bread in wartime. While its attributes are noble, I think we miss the formative insights earned from consistent care of the diverse community that is a sourdough starter. Attention to these practices of care reveal the woman’s actions in a new light: her hiding leaven in the dough involved much more than opening a packet of Fleischmann’s. In order to have leaven to hide required her careful and attentive maintenance of the starter. The single act depicted in this parable encapsulates consistent and faithful care over a long period of time.
The kingdom of heaven may be like the leaven, but leaven needs a careful baker to feed it regularly with new flour and water, keeping it alive for baking. Therefore, this parable challenges us to see that the kingdom of heaven is not an event or reality divorced from human action and care. We could easily ignore the woman’s attentive care for the starter prior to her hiding it in three measures of dough, but it was the days and weeks of her sensitivity that enabled the starter to leaven the dough. Relatedly, just as sourdough starters reflect the characteristics of their contexts, I think this parable challenges readers to attend carefully to the needs of their community. It resists tendencies toward universal salves alienated from particular people and places, and it calls for people to engage in the daily, sustained, and sometimes quotidian tasks that are necessary for life. Instead of a glib story that speaks of God’s future action, this parable invites the reader into the long, consistent work of care for their community, joining God in bringing about the kingdom of heaven.
We are currently living in the midst of a pandemic, heightened awareness of racial injustices long ignored, and an ecological crisis (to name but a few). To say we are in need of daily faithful practices of care would be an understatement. While inviting friends and family over to share a loaf of bread feels all but impossible given our current context and challenges, we are still interdependent and contingent human creatures. We can still find ways to live into the challenge of this parable and the present hope of the kingdom of heaven.
