Oh, the wonders of baking one’s own sourdough bread

The sourdough breadbaking bandwagon finally made its pit stop at our house, and much to my surprise, I hopped right on. For weeks, I’d been rolling my eyes at the sudden bakers, those who keep us updated on the status of their bubbling starters and crust consistency. The shelterinplace orders prompted a trendy baking blitz and, I’ll admit, I found the mass enthusiasm a bit overboard. Bread is available at the store, immediately and for $3. How is baking it so special?

I get it now. Oh, how I get it — and the jars of living yeast on my counter are sparking muchneeded joy.

It all began, as things do, with a post on Nextdoor, the social media app that connects neighbors. Marie, who lives a few blocks away and has already helped acquaint us with our relatively new neighborhood, publicly posted her willingness to share a sourdough starter, the living yeast concoction needed to make sourdough bread.

What the heck. Let’s see what the buzz is all about. “Hi Marie. We’d love to try a sourdough starter,” I said via email.

An hour later, a neighborly care package sat at our front door. Inside was a jar of beige goo.

It’s been three days since Marie dropped off the starter, and I will never be the same. Bread baking is what I do now. It’s who I am. I feed my starter. I tend to it. It sits in a place of honor on a mosaic dish my mother gifted me. My sourdough starter is my second child, delicately alive and in need of my undivided attention. Each of the three loaves that have emerged from the glorious goo are life lessons unto themselves, guiding me closer and closer to the perfect loaf.

Why did I once mock this beautiful bread process?

Naturally, I posted my new passion to Facebook, where my uncle reminded me that baking is in our blood. My greatgrandfather, an Irish immigrant named Edward McDevitt, began work as a driver at his older brother’s Minna Street bakery upon his arrival in San Francisco around 1880. He was just 16 years old. According to an extensive family history compiled by my cousin Ray McDevitt, Edward opened his own bakery at 32 Sixth St. in 1901, an address now occupied by Modena Pizza and Ice Cream. (Edward’s home, just a block away at 110 Sixth St., is now the Werk Beauty Supply store.)

After his business and home were lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, my greatgrandfather went to work at the California Baking Co. and would go on to help run it. Edward later left the bread business, a career that had provided him with a great deal of (forgive me) dough, but the Great Depression hit his interests hard and irreparably.

Edward died in 1943, and the stories I’ve heard about that (rather exciting) side of the family are far less about bread than they are about a villainous aunt named Kitty who rescued my grandmother’s parents from financial ruin — and never let them forget it.

While I certainly inherited my grandmother’s flair for the dramatic, I now wonder whether my greatgrandfather’s baking gene might also have passed on down. There’s little information on Edward’s skill as a baker. By the time my grandmother was born, he was a businessman working from an office, not a kitchen.

Still, I’m only three loaves in and I’m pretty sure an ancestral spirit has been awakened. My first loaf was a heavy brick of damp flour. My second loaf was thrillingly edible. The third, a piece of food I now consider part of my soul, could be sold at a farmer’s market for $10. She’s a golden goddess, a bubblecrusted beauty with a hollow sound, a sour taste and a satisfying chew.

There are so many components to the breadbaking process that fulfill me. In fact, freelancer Tiffanie Wen wrote a great piece in The Chronicle about the psychology behind our baking bonanza.

For me, it’s not the meditative knead or a return to mindfulness. Creating a loaf of bread feels like a vital survival skill at a time when we’re all a little worried about surviving.

And while sure, a vegetable garden and a medical degree might give me a better chance at longevity than loaf after loaf of homemade artisan bread, I’m feeling accomplished and earthy — and full. I bet this is what Alice Waters feels like every day. It’s a nice feeling.

It’s been three days since Marie dropped off the starter, and I will never be the same.