Flour and time

According to a recent Facebook post from a reputable British food magazine, sourdough is “getting us all through lockdown.” That’s right, sourdough is what’s getting us “all” through lockdown. I practically choked on my tea. It’s a ridiculous statement, firstly by suggesting that the entire population is using the same coping mechanism to deal with this unprecedented unexpected time, as well as presuming that everyone has the time, means and capability to devote hours watching over a precious starter and bake it in time for brunch. It feels like the quintessence of middle-class myopia. Yet a brief glimpse of the online food world suggests that the statement is not entirely unfounded – thousands of people have been posting about their homemade sourdough loaves on social media recently. And if further proof were needed, well, have you been able to buy flour in the last 12 weeks?

At first I thought the flour shortage was simply a response to panic buying. With the ever-increasing likelihood of meeting empty shelves in supermarkets, it made sense that people were buying flour in case bread suddenly became unavailable. But the buying frenzy ended weeks ago and there is no shortage of the pre-sliced or supermarket-baked loaves in the shops. Yet flour, along with eggs, sugar and other baking basics, can still be hard to find.

The fact that people have been turning to baking in this time of enforced isolation isn’t surprising. I’ve written in the past about the distracting and soothing qualities of baking, and our need for such succour is greater than ever before. So the absence of plain flour and eggs I could understand, with people turning to brownies and banana bread to block out the sound of the news headlines. But it’s not just been the flour vanishing, it’s yeast, too. And unless Brits are suddenly making babka and Gugelhupf in their thousands, there’s only one explanation. People are making bread.

It might seem like a bit of an odd choice. Given that supermarkets are now fully stocked, there’s no real need to make bread, no more than there was last year or the year before. And yet the activity has seen a staggering surge in popularity. So why now? One potential explanation is time: even those who haven’t been furloughed will likely have found themselves with a few extra hours on their hands, thanks to the lack of commuting or in-person socialising. Baking bread takes time and planning, requiring at least two sessions of kneading and proving before finally being relegated to the oven. It cannot be made with the light-fingered, five-minute flounce of a fairy cake, so you can’t (well you can, but I wouldn’t recommend it) decide when you’re knackered and emotional at 11pm that it’s time to knock up a good old fashioned loaf. No, bread requires that you treat it like a grown-up; it demands your time and total concentration. As such, bread making is not so easily fitted around a busy working day, so it’s not surprising that those who enjoy baking it, but who usually struggle to find the time, are now using lockdown to don their aprons and indulge.

True, bread isn’t the only foodstuff that requires a little more-than-average planning and preparation, but I doubt that macarons or croquembouche are having much of a moment right now. There will be those making them, of course, but they’re probably the sort of people who'd consider homemade millefeuille a simple, spur-of-the-moment bake. The scale of the flour shortage suggests it’s people who would never normally consider making bread who are now taking to it in their thousands. They're doing so for a reason: the secret to which lies in its essential role in our culture and history.

Milled grains and water, mixed and then cooked, have been a cornerstone of our diet for 30,000 years, existing in hundreds of different forms around the world. Bread has played a symbolic part in cultures across the globe; used in religious ceremonies and sacrifices, presented as gifts and peace offerings. It is the building block of thousands of meals, can even be a meal in itself. Consciously or not, I think we feel the pull to make bread because of its link to the past. People have made bread through the peaks and troughs of human civilisation: through the rise and fall of empires, through conflicts and celebrations, through times of suffering, times of happiness and times of disease. A sense of comfort and peacefulness can be found in its constant nature – the gastronomic equivalent of looking at the mountains. Both were here long before we came into being, and will continue to exist long after we are gone.

In the past, bread may have been a family’s chief weapon against starvation – and it wouldn’t be uncommon for it to constitute an entire meal. Although many of us are lucky to no longer rely on bread to sustain us physically, in this new time of difficulty we are evidently turning to it again. For we are experiencing a new famine: we, too, are plagued by a vicious, gnawing emptiness. We do not hunger for mere sustenance; we ache for choice, for freedom, for the brief, precious comfort of human touch. As the wide wide world seems to shrink around us, we have been forced to turn inwards and pare our lives back to essentials. Our chief focus now has to be on tomorrow, and how to get there. Because without a cure, vaccine or guaranteed solution at hand, the only way to fight this virus is to keep going. And to keep going, we have to feed ourselves. Humans need to eat to live and thrive and reproduce: it is our most primitive, most essential tool for survival. And to satisfy this basic instinct, we turn to basic foods. That’s where bread comes in.

Bread is filling and nourishing, and seems to make many of us hark back to childhood and “simpler times”. Spread thickly with butter, softened in milk and sugar, toasted and sliced into soldiers to be dunked into a golden egg – every image suffuses comfort and sustenance. It’s no wonder it’s what we want to make when the going gets tough. Perhaps more than any other food, bread is symbolic of home: a place of warmth, safety and shelter from the outside world. This idealised home is constant and unchanging, one in which we will feel loved and protected. So when the outside world feels increasingly frightening, we cling to the ideal more than ever, and try to recreate it in our own kitchens, hoping that the smell of freshly baked bread will be enough to keep the monsters at bay.

Because of this association with home and tradition, bread baking brings with it a sense of stability and security. It is an activity in which “the old rules still work.” After all, besides a few crucial changes in technology, breadmaking works as it has always worked. We use the same ingredients our foremothers used and make, if not identical, very similar variations of the same thing. It has always felt elemental to me: one of the most basic, fundamental acts of cooking. As we form a dough and stretch it into life, we take part in a tradition that existed thousands of years before we existed. Thousands upon thousands of our ancestors have walked upon this earth, and have made bread to feed themselves and their families. I like to think that when I knead my own dough, I can feel their hands holding mine – strong, steady palms guiding me and teaching me. It is a gentle, comforting presence, a quiet and precious solace. I am not alone. Things might just be alright.

Every loaf of bread contains the stamp of human ingenuity and perseverance, symbolic of human survival against the odds. It’s the logical solution for coping with difficult times. Not that I’m suggesting that a wholesome homemade cobb or stottie is going to protect us from the dangers lurking beyond the confines of the kitchen; but, by being an active, elbow-grease-requiring distraction, it might just help fight the feelings of powerlessness that we find ourselves plagued by in darker days. We may not be able to control the way things work outside the front door, but we can ensure we have something to keep our mind and hands busy, and, ideally, something delicious to eat and sustain ourselves with afterwards. After all, no battle, whether physical or psychological, can be won on an empty stomach.

It behoves me to say, though, that just because bread is symbolic and a great human tradition, it doesn’t mean that becoming a self-taught artisan baker is the *right* way to cope with 2020. Quite frankly it doesn’t matter what you do to try to feel better – whether that’s gardening, frequent napping, walking, writing poetry, learning to code, doodling on the walls, whittling flutes, knitting or watching endless reruns of Miranda. What you do to get from one day to the next is of no consequence; the important thing is that you get there. And if you get to eat homemade toast for breakfast, well, that’s simply a bonus.