The Starter and I Are Both Works in Progress

February fourteenth and I spent the morning covered in flour. Not on purpose, that's just how sourdough works, apparently. I'd been reading about it for weeks, the way you do when something sounds just difficult enough to be interesting, and then last Sunday I finally bought the jar and the flour and the little kitchen scale and started the starter. That was five days ago.

Here's the thing nobody tells you upfront: a sourdough starter is a living thing. You have to feed it every day. You have to keep it warm. You look at it in the morning the way you'd look at a houseplant you're not sure you've been watering correctly, which, incidentally, I now also have. The pothos on the windowsill has been there since November and I think it's fine, and I'm choosing to apply that same optimistic logic to the jar of bubbling flour and water sitting next to it. Both alive. Probably.

examining the starter like it owes me an explanation

I mixed the actual dough today for the first time, which is a different thing from keeping the starter going, and that part was genuinely satisfying in a way I didn't expect. There's something grounding about pressing your hands into something and feeling it push back. It doesn't require you to think. You just fold and turn and fold again, and for about twenty minutes I wasn't thinking about the blog post I've been sitting with, or the community center class on Wednesday, or the reply I still haven't sent. Just flour, dough, the sound of the radiator.

the part where I pretend I know what I'm doing

I don't know if the bread will be good. The starter smells aggressively alive, which the internet says is correct, so I'm going with it. I'll let you know how it goes. Happy Valentine's Day, if that's your thing, I'm spending mine with a glass jar and questionable ambitions, which honestly feels right.