The Jar Had Opinions

July twenty-eighth. Three weeks ago I started a sourdough starter. I want to be precise about the sequence: I did not decide to bake sourdough bread and then research how starters work. I researched how starters work, became briefly convinced this was the kind of patient, attentive practice I am suited to, bought a bag of whole wheat flour with some intention behind it, and then spent the next twenty-one days feeding a jar of flour and water every morning like it was a dependent.

The thing about a sourdough starter is that it asks you to pay a very specific kind of attention, the same water temperature, the same ratio, the same window of time, and I am, it turns out, the person who gives a jar its own corner of the counter and then stands in front of it at seven in the morning wondering if it looks different. It did not always look different. Sometimes it looked exactly like what it was, which is flour and water in a jar, and I would tip it slightly to check for bubbles and Gerald's vine would be doing its thing behind me on the shelf and the collapsed bowl would be up there above the stove and the whole kitchen would be extremely composed except for me, scrutinizing a jar.

week three of cohabitation

I named it before I named the problem. The problem, if I'm being honest, is that I was less interested in bread and more interested in the ritual of tending something with a schedule. I already have that, Wednesday yoga, Tuesday climbing, the standing order in the kitchen, and what I actually wanted was the feeling of beginning something I hadn't done before, which the starter did deliver, just not in the way I expected. What it delivered was three weeks of being genuinely uncertain whether I was doing it correctly, which is a feeling I apparently find more compelling than I would have predicted.

I have not yet baked bread. The starter is still on the counter. It is, by any reasonable measure, alive. Whether that counts as a success is a question I keep not answering, which is maybe also the answer.