Email Newsletter: Listening to the Whisper of Bread

In January 2019, I started an email newsletter about sourdough bread baking. I’d been baking for a few months, and the challenge and excitement of everything from keeping my starter alive to turning out edible loaves was beginning to take over my personality. Just ask my friends.

So I did the obvious millennial writer thing: more.

Listening to the Whisper of Bread is all about what it feels like and what it tastes like and what I've learned while elbow-deep in dough. It includes stories and recipe tips and even some dispatches from the baking internet! And with very few clicks, you too can have my intermittent musings grace your inbox.

Read the first installment below:

Introducing: Listening to the Whisper of Bread!

To me, baking a loaf of bread is like performing a magic trick. Like uncovering a coin where none used to be, finding that one card in a deck, or pulling a proverbial rabbit out of its top hat. 

I know this sounds silly, I really do, but give it a try and see how you feel. I will always feel like I've pulled off a remarkable slight of hand. 

From my very first try, in March of 2016, I was smitten. The recipe was the New York Times's no-knead bread and its particular sorcery lay mostly in how supernaturally easy it was — combine a few ingredients, wait several hours, and voilà! It was light and simple but, especially right out of the oven, irresistible.

When I baked my first loaf of sourdough, over two years later, the feeling of awe returned. Because here's the magical thing about bread: it takes so little to become so much. Mix together some flour, water, starter and a pinch of salt — a measly set of ingredients, really — and you've got bread! Delicious, complex, satisfying bread. 

But of course that's both the literal truth and a complete lie.

Bread doesn't just take flour and water and salt. It takes patience and care and precision and determination and even hope. And finding the proper mix of all those ingredients is the real challenge, and the real joy, of baking. 

This is a newsletter about sourdough bread baking. About what it feels like and what it tastes like and what I've learned while elbow-deep in dough. It'll include stories and recipe tips and maybe even some dispatches from the baking internet! [#sourdough #realbread #wildyeast]

Practically I think it'll work like this: Each month for the next five months I'll send an edition of the newsletter [Editors note, Jan. 2020: my timing did not, uh, work out exactly like this]. Each newsletter will have its own topic of focus, and over five months we'll cover care, precision, patience, determination and hope — five inconspicuous yet crucial ingredients for a good loaf. Beyond this basic outline of an idea, though, I'm making this up as I go along. Maybe I'll write about other stuff, too. Maybe I'll include perspectives from bakers I admire. Maybe at some point I'll explain what the title means!

I'll be back with more flour,

Tajha

Like what you’ve read? You can get more from the archive here, or join in and subscribe here.