Does sourdough bring you mindfulness?

It’s almost one month into 2021 and we still haven't gotten over the head scramble of 2020. It seems that across the globe a collective promise has been made to make 2021 a better year than its predecessor, with some bold enough to continue on with new year resolutions.

I am however still stuck in my groundhog day rituals, one of which is making sourdough. Already known for its somewhat superior nutritional value, last year we saw sourdough cult-culture extend its magical healing expertise into mental health, with promises of reducing anxiety through an ‘organoleptic experience’.  Having both transitioned to the new norm of working from home and my nagging desire for finding some inner peace, I was curious to take up this social prescription trend. 

I was curious to investigate the validity in baking as a social prescription. 

Mindfulness is supposedly, the process of allowing oneself to engage with different physical sensations. Mindful activities get us out of our heads and bring us into the present.  Washing up is a great example – there are many sensorial stimuli to focus on: the warmth of the water, the texture of the plates, the sound of bubbles, the smell of washing up liquid.

It wasn’t too long into the pandemic that sourdough making started trending online as the ultimate immersive experience of mindfulness. From the gentle nudges of social media, I was encouraged that the rest of the world was also baking sourdough that really made me think that I should be too.  The message was simple: bake, be healthy, be happy, be mindful, be productive!

Sourdough brings you mindfulness. Simple as that?

Having gained a prolific status as a marker of the modern lifestyle, sourdough has become symbolic on social media to represent all things healthy, wholesome and therefore complete.  It can be commonly seen pictured at a post yoga class brunch alongside it’s best friend avocado and a pair of Lululemon tights. To borrow Jia Tolentino’s argument in an article published by the Guardian in 2019, this setting may “reflect all cues of optimisation”.

When lockdown hit, evidently ‘hip’ brunch spots closed their doors and opportunities to host the perfectly choreographed brunch were sacrificed to Covid-19. In a combination of attempts to renegotiate aspects of our former lives into the ‘new normal’ along with a collective effort to raise the importance of actively looking after our mental health, baking sourdough, along with banana bread, entered the online arena as an activity that would bring us closer together within this dark and murky time.

Luckily for me, my dad has been baking sourdough bread for over 10 years (as a birthday present my mum sent him off on a bread baking course, I think now to help alleviate some of the stress he was experiencing at work.  We all benefited – more bread and less arguments). So feeling a little smug with the head start in the pursuit of baking goals, I asked him to teach me how to make sourdough. What I have learnt is this: sourdough making is part baking, part similar to caring for a demanding, labour-intensive houseplant. 

You realise in the process that actually the dough is using you to continue its existence rather than assisting you to become mindful.  You are just an aid to its mitosis.

This becomes apparent whilst first adding the tepid water to the starter and flour.  Initially these separate ingredients together take on the form of some sort of star wars alien - a powdery mass with flaky tendrils of dough hanging on to its loose exterior and a lukewarm sticky interior at its heart.  Your job here is to slowly concrete mix this alien together until it is consistent enough in form to be turned out onto a work surface.

At this stage, this extraterrestrial life form begins to mutate into a sticky ball of goop as you start to pick it up and turn it.  It’s heavy, warm body is very reluctant at first to the movement, clinging to your hands, nails and the work surface. As opposed to kneading, you turn bread by picking up the dough, stretching it slightly, folding over and banging it back down to trap the air. In all, my dad’s method includes about 400 turns. 

After 50 you become so engrossed in the pattern of lifting, pulling, folding, and banging that the brain switches off to all exterior thoughts and your arm muscles become stuck in this repetitive pattern.  You’ve become an alien-bread making machine! Approx. 150 turns in and it's time to add the salt.  Again, this mutates the dough’s consistency.  It’s still goop, but it is now textured with salt crystals under a thin layer of it’s goopy skin. You can tell when all the salt has combined when it stops being sticky and instead transforms into a tacky and sweaty mess (you’re probably at this stage too).

Hurrah the end is in sight!  – your sweaty goop ball is ready for it’s last transformation.  Sprinkle flour onto the work surface and now knead the dough into the flour. Like talc powder to sweaty thighs, the dough becomes velvety and soft. It starts to resist your pushes. It's no longer dependent on you, you have served your purpose for it’s progression.

I’ve got to say, nothing about this process is glamorous or instagrammable.  At no point did I feel the urge to pick up my phone with doughy fingers and take a selfie with my dough baby.  I will have to admit that although the making part was engrossing (read exhausting and gross), I don’t think I’ve reached nirvana quite yet. 

Here’s the thing. Making bread has taken on a new role as therapy.  And I’m not here to knock that. 

But when something like sourdough baking blows up on social media as a ‘cure’ for anxiety, trending as something to be used as a mindful experience rather than something fun, to be enjoyed for no other reason than for the love of bread, in my opinion we've sort of lost the point.

It goes back to Tolentino’s ideas of optimisation - Seldom anymore it seems that we do, post or perform anything that doesn’t actively ‘improve’ us. It feels as though the glamorisation of mindful activities like baking not only sets you up for disappointment when it doesn’t take all your troubles away, but further increases the shiteness of how others feel who, for many reasons just can’t bake fucking sourdough.

So here, in my opinion, is what sourdough baking is.  It is a form of physical exercise that allows you to unplug the cerebral.  It’s constructive and creative.  It is a repeated process which allows you to utilise the least amount of mental focus on the activity at hand AND you get something nice at the end.  If you wish to read this as mindfulness too, then yes, I concede. Sourdough brings you mindfulness.