Робин Слоун - Sourdough

Here’s the thing.

I think many of my relatives like being obscure because it means they can’t be ambitious either. It lets them off the hook.

I think more people should know about the Mazg—particularly our cuisine. I think we should have restaurants with signs and front doors.

I think a lot of things.

A CATALOG OF PHENOMENA

THE RHYTHM WENT LIKE THIS: In the evening, when I got home from General Dexterity, I would play Chaiman’s CD and feed the Clement Street starter. I would wait for it to bubble and grow and suffuse the apartment with its banana scent. Then I would section off half of the mass, mix it into my dough, and form the loaves, which I would set beside the open kitchen window to rise slowly overnight in the naturally occurring refrigerator that was the Richmond District.

I went to sleep, but that wasn’t the end of the day for the starter. Many nights—not all, but many—it woke me with its grumblings and exhalations.

A catalog of phenomena:

• Tiny winking bubbles produced not randomly but in a perfect grid across the starter’s surface, like turbines on a power plant floor

• A dusting of pinprick lights, luminous powdered sugar

• Stronger lights emanating from deeper within the starter’s bulk, blurred like the sodium glow of a city viewed from a window seat on an airplane landing in low clouds

• A fine mazelike patterning on the starter’s surface, retracting into smoothness upon my approach

• Songs, various: all in the key of Chaiman’s CD

• Scents, various: with banana as the backbone, always, but adding other fruity currents as well as, on one memorable night, the smell of smoke so potent I thought for a moment the Jay Steve had lit the backyard on fire

Always that glossiness; always the moment when it wasn’t slime but something firmer, more self-possessed.

Always I saw these things in darkness, usually past midnight, in various states of wakefulness. Some of the encounters felt dreamlike, and in fact I suspected at least one really was a dream; others were as sharp and vivid as that first song.

When I saw the pinprick lights, I tried to snap a photo with my phone, but in the morning my camera roll was just a line of swampy rectangles, the outline of the crock barely darker than the countertop, the lights I had seen with my eyes not sufficiently bright to register pixels on the camera’s sensor.

Another night, with the city-like extrusions, I tried again, this time using my phone’s flash, and it bounced back brightly from the shiny ceramic crock, blinding me. A moment passed, my eyes swam pink, and then the starter, summoning some hidden energy, flashed back. It was the faintest flicker of green, but it registered like a signal flare across a vast abyss. A message from Alpha Centauri. The resulting photo was awful and alien, like the time I tried to take a picture of the inside of my mouth to check on a blister that was forming. (Sorry, but I did.)

When the starter sang, I tried to record it, but these recordings, like the pictures, were all inscrutable in the morning. Either my phone’s mic didn’t pick up anything, or my own ragged breathing drowned it out, or there was a note faintly audible, but so what? Who was I going to play it for? On what website was I going to post it? Global Gluten? New thread: Does anyone else’s starter sing? Here’s a clip.

I stopped getting up. The rattle of the crock’s lid would rouse me, and I would listen for a minute, then roll over and go back to sleep.

* * *

AT THE CLOSE OF THE THIRD WEEK, Chef Kate summoned me to her kitchen.

“So, I love this bread, but these kids can’t tell the difference, and it’s bumming me out.” She waved her hand dismissively at the cafeteria.

I felt a twinge of shame. Was this Chef Kate’s life? Preparing great food for a terminally unappreciative clientele? No one ever ate the creative salads. Meanwhile, the tater tots were depleted in minutes.

“It’s really special,” Kate said. “You know that, right?”

I had suspected it, but hearing her say it plucked a string inside me.

“I think you should try to get a spot at a farmers market. The faces in the crust, they’re weird. People like that shit. Do you know how the markets work? No, of course you don’t. There’s an audition every month. Fancy judges. Mostly insufferable, but Lily Belasco is okay. If they like what you bring, they assign you to a market. Lake Merritt, if you’re lucky. Colma, if you’re not. I’m pretty sure you’ll get a spot if you try.”

I told her I would think about it, and she was quiet a moment.

“I’m sure you like your work here,” Kate said. “I have no idea what you do. No, please don’t try to explain it. But I feel like I have to tell you, for what it’s worth … feeding people is really freakin’ great. There’s nothing better.”

Even feeding people as ungrateful as the Dextrous?

She began to reply, but something caught her eye, and instead she shouted to one of her sous chefs: “ Mario! We need a bacon refresh! ” She turned back to me. “Trust me, if I could pay for my kid’s school with farmers market dollars, I’d be there right alongside you.”

THE LOIS CLUB (CONTINUED)

I MESSAGED HILLTOP LOIS and told her I would bring bread to the next meeting of the Lois Club.

I’m so glad you’re coming back!! she replied. We were afraid we might have scared you off. Flashy Lois can be a bit much …

It was nice to know we each had our own system for Lois disambiguation. Who was I to them? Young Lois, I supposed. Better than Boring Lois, or Lois Whose Stomach Hurt.

In fact, my stomach had been feeling pretty good lately.

So it came to pass that the Loises of the San Francisco Bay Area built open-faced sandwiches, piling prosciutto and fig over soft slathers of goat cheese all atop slices of my bread. They ate all of it, every crumb, and they oohed their appreciation.

“I’ve been baking bread for twenty years,” Professor Lois said, “and it never turned out this good.”

“My starter is unique,” I said.

She snorted. “I get mine in the mail from King Arthur—the flour company. Every three months it dies and I order a new one.”

The Loises shared their updates. Compaq Lois was organizing a fund-raiser for a turkey vulture research center; Professor Lois had just returned from an academic conference in Montreal; Impeccable Lois would soon acquire a vintage Moog synthesizer for a very good price; and Old Lois was still alive.

I told the Loises about my baking adventures—they interrupted to say, “It’s really great,” and “Truly, Lois, dear, you have a gift”—and also about Chef Kate’s challenge.

“I love the farmers markets,” Professor Lois cooed. “You should do it.” The other Loises nodded in agreement.

Compaq Lois spoke. Her voice was not kind or coddling, but stern. “Do you like your job?”

My hesitation answered for me.

“I know I have strong opinions about everything—I can’t help it, I do—but this one’s the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.”

The seriousness of her statement quieted the room.

“If this is fun for you—and I think it is fun for you? Damn, you’re good at it. You should try out for those markets. See what happens.”

The other Loises murmured their assent. Everyone wore inward looks, perhaps contemplating the things they wished they’d done sooner.

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the advice.”

The wine was gone, so Hilltop Lois, wearing a mischievous look, uncorked a bottle of port. I got the sense this did not happen at every meeting of the Lois Club, but the ones at which it did: those were the good ones.