We had circled each other warily for nearly a year—dated, broke up, argued, kissed, avoided each other, hung out late and kissed again—and after a summer mostly apart, we were on an official date. Nick had declared his love and I had said I would go out with him. He was late to pick me up (he told me later that he almost didn’t come at all). We went to Jasmine’s party, but didn’t tell anyone we were on a date. We figured that it would probably end badly, again. On the way home, I threw up out of sheer nerves (I’d had about half of a drink). I guess I could tell that this was something big. Nick kissed me again, anyway. I know that doesn’t sound very romantic, but it truly was.
Fifteen years later, we’re still in love. We’ve done a lot, and been through a lot, in that decade and a half. We’ve moved from Chicago to New York to Philadelphia. We’ve traveled to Spain, New Zealand, France and England, as well as over much of the US. We’ve been totally shit poor, so poor that I made pasta instead of buying it, in order to save a few pennies (best economy ever, if you’ve got the time, and back then I had nothing but time). Today, we have some money but much less time, which is also hard, but very different.
We have a daughter now, who is just about one and a half years old on our anniversary. We spent thirteen and a half years together as just the two of us, and at first it was a huge surprise, every day, to have a third person in the house with us. We love her so much.
We got engaged on our 5th anniversary and were married shortly before our 7th. In case you were wondering, we celebrate both anniversaries, on the principle that love is always worth celebrating. For our 10th anniversary, we planned an entire weekend of frivolity and eating, and it was awesome.
Five years later, we didn’t go quite so all out. We’re trying to save money right now, so a splashy weekend was out, and besides, we have Zoe now, so we can’t be quite so irresponsible. We did hire a sitter on Saturday night and go out for one really nice meal. And we each came up with a gift that cost exactly no money to give to the other—and no, I’m not going to tell you what those gifts were. We’ve promised ourselves that for our 20th, we’re going to do something truly spectacular.
But I wanted to do one special thing to mark the date, and so I mixed together some flour and water and left the bowl sitting out on the kitchen counter.
I am trying to make a sourdough starter. If it works, it could live for a very long time. Some lucky people have starters that are over a hundred years old and have been passed down through generations of the family. I’ve been wanting to try this simple, yet oddly miraculous feat, and our 15th anniversary seemed like an auspicious day to do so. If it works, I’ll call it my Anniversary Starter.
There are many different recipes for starting a starter, or mother as some call it. They all involve mixing precise proportions of flour and water and then letting the wild yeast that live all around us get to work. A warm (70 degrees, or around room temperature) bowl of wet carbohydrates is a delightful environment for microorganisms. Basically, if you build it, they will come. Or rather: they’re already here, but if you give them a happy home, they will flourish.
I’m using the recipe from Michael Pollan’s Cooked, partly because it was this book that got me interested in making my own starter, and partly because I trust Pollan’s recipe to work well, but also because it only requires me to feed the starter once a day, whereas most others I’ve seen call for twice. A starter is a living thing: it requires care and feeding.
So on the evening of October 2, I mixed together 50 grams each of regular (all purpose) flour and whole wheat flour, added 100 grams of warm (about 80 degrees) tap water, and stirred it with my finger, just to personalize it further by adding in any yeast that might be living on me. I let it sit out on the counter, and warned Nick to please not throw it away if he was cleaning up. By the next day, it was showing signs of microbial activity: lumps and bubbles, and a yeasty, bready smell. I started feeding it.
This means that each night before bed I throw away most (about 80%) of the contents of the bowl and then stir in another 50 grams whole wheat flour, 50 grams regular flour, and 100 grams warm water. Then I cover it with a light cloth and leave it alone for another day.
So far, this is going great. I have a bubbling bowl of what looks like pancake batter. From some casual internet reading, I’ve gathered that I should probably let it gain in strength for at least a week before trying to bake with it, so that won’t happen until this coming weekend. Pollan has a test I can run to make sure the starter is ready: the night before baking, I will make a leaven by combining 100 grams whole wheat flour, 100 grams regular flour, 200 grams warm water, and 2 tablespoons of starter. The next morning, I’ll test the leaven by dropping a tablespoon of it in warm water. If it floats, it’s ready. If not, I’ll need to add some commercial yeast if I want my bread to rise properly.
I don’t know why a proper leaven floats. I will try to find out by the time I write my post about actually doing all this.
A starter can, of course, die. It can be thrown out by an overly zealous cleaner. It can dry up from lack of water. Without regular feedings, it will starve. The microbial community can simply fail. (Although—very important—a starter can be kept dormant in the refrigerator or the freezer, so you don’t have to take it on vacation with you and such. Some people do, but I’m not planning on going quite that obsessive.)
But here’s my point: if my starter dies, that’s okay. I’ll make a new one, and try again.
Some people get very antsy about the symbolism of planting a tree when a baby is born or giving a plant to someone for a wedding gift. They think that if the living thing dies, it’s bad juju for the baby or the marriage. At the very least, the symbolism is poor.
This doesn’t worry me in the least. For one thing, I’m not at all superstitious. And for another, if there’s one thing that fifteen years in a relationship has taught me, it’s that starting again is something we do over and over.
Nick and I have never stopped. We have never broken up (or even really come close, as far as I know). But we have started again many, many times. We have started again in a new apartment, a new city, with a new baby. We have come up with so many life plans that I get dizzy just thinking about them all: possibilities for career changes, graduate programs, cross-country moves, and more. We want the best possible life, for each of us separately and for the two of us (now three of us!) together, and we are constantly imagining and talking and working our way toward that brighter future.
We fail, sometimes. Nick didn’t get into every graduate program. I didn’t sell my novel. But the program Nick is in is amazing, and he loves it. And I’m still writing, still trying to create, and I’m hopeful that maybe this next project may make it into the hands of some readers.
I think that a starter is, actually, the best possible symbol for our anniversary. It takes the most humble ingredients and turns them into life. With a little care, it makes more deliciousness possible. And if this one fails, I can always start again.
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| Nearly week-old starter, fresh from a feeding. It looks like nothing at all. |
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