Checking in :)
an essay about Bread & Justice (no bread this week)
Hey Bread Friends!
Reminder that there will be no bread this weekend, as Iβm out of town. Instead, this week Iβm sharing an essay with you that I wrote recently for a food & agriculture magazine called MAD Agriculture. This essay was my reflection on the Bread & Justice journey over the years. Thank YOU for the role that youβve played in getting us to this point :)
Iβve been called a lot of things over the years, but recently, someone introduced me as a βsourdough bread activistββa description that caught me by surprise and filled me with delight.
Itβs not only that I advocate that people should eat more sourdough breadβalthough I certainly do have strong feelings about the benefits of naturally fermented bread. But perhaps what makes that title particularly appropriate for me is that in the past several years I have chosen sourdough bread as my vehicle for social activism.
When I first started baking sourdough bread, I had no idea where this journey was going to take me. Over the years I have had a couple of failed attempts with breadmaking, but in January of 2020 I committed to learning how to get past the intimidation.
Within a couple months the world shut down indefinitely as a result of COVID-19. Like so many others, I suddenly had the time on my hands to hone my craft of sourdough bread making.
My wife captured this picture of me smiling with dough in my hands in June of 2020. It was the first time that I was pushing myself to graduate from two loaves in a batch, to four loaves in a single batch. I knew that bread baking was a fun and healthy distraction from the weight of things on my mind, but it wasnβt until I saw this photo of myself that I realized it was also my therapy.
At the time, I had numerous sleepless nights reflecting on the tragedy of George Floydβs murder. But in the midst of grief, fear, anger, and fatigue, here I was smiling ear to ear with more dough in my hands than I ever had before. This may have been the moment that I realized I had found a way to manifest joy through breadmaking.
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If you want to read the rest of this essay, check it out here (along with some really cool photos from the my basement bakery) over on the MAD Agriculture website.
See you next week!
Cheers friends,
Mo the baker