During this quarantine, I’ve discovered a lot about my husband.
Like if he could, he’d work from home forever.
Or how he likes sitting on the front porch to watch hummingbirds just as much as I do.
Oh, and he’s cheating on me.
But it’s not what you think: it’s not with another woman (or a man for that matter). In a way, it’s far worse.
He’s cheating with our sourdough starter.
Let me start at the beginning. A few years ago, when we were going to a gym (remember when we could all go out wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted to? Ah, good times…), the owner mentioned to us how sourdough bread would be much better for us to eat.
He started talking about it having less carbs, good microorganisms, etc. At the time, to avoid nodding off from boredom, I was thinking that the only way you would get me to stop eating bread was when you could pry it from my cold, dead hands. Then I began thinking about warm, crunchy French bread with just enough butter on it.
That’s when I started drooling—not a good thing to do in front of your trainer. Because by then, he had moved on to discussing good greens to eat, and I certainly didn’t want him to think I was all that into kale.
Shudder…
My husband, though, paid attention to the sourdough bread lecture, as he started looking for it at the grocery store. It was near-impossible to find without a million chemicals added, so he gave up.
Until quarantine hit.
One of my best friends mentioned that we could try making our own sourdough starter while we’re in quarantine. “It’s fun,” she said. “You’ll love it,” she said.
I didn’t think it was fun. Nor did I love it. At all. I kept watching my husband mix the starter, and let it sit. Then wait to see if it was “right.”
I got bored. This was taking way-too-long. So I went off to read. But not before I found out that we had to name it.
That’s right—my friend said it was a requirement to name this starter because it was alive.
Um, that really creeped me out. Almost as much as the time I read the research that stated vegetables, like carrots, emit sound waves equal to a scream when you pick them. (It’s amazing that I’m able to eat anything at all anymore. First, our veggies are yelling, and now I’m naming something that we’ll bite into? And people wonder why I’m not keeping a journal during the pandemic. “So that night, we finally ate a piece of our friend, Charlie, because he had become the right consistency and risen when baked.” I don’t want to go down in history as a member of the new Donner party.)
My friend named hers William Butler Yeast.
That’s a great name—literary and sourdough-related. It became a competition with my husband and me—we had to come up with the perfect name.
One day, it just came out of my mouth. Having grown up Catholic, it was absolutely perfect.
The sourdough starter became known as Jesus H. Crust.
(Did I mention that folks in my family cursed a lot too?)
Anyway, once we had our name, my husband became determined. (That’s a better term than obsessive, and I’d like to stay married.) He was going to make this work.
He tried to get the right consistency; he baked. He failed. He consulted my friend. He Googled “sourdough bread” to find the solution.
The man even watched YouTube videos about it.
Then, like a man stepping out on his wife might buy that side piece a beautiful bauble like a tennis bracelet or nice earrings or a weekend away, my husband bought a gift for his struggling sourdough starter.
A $7 bag of organic flour.
I kid you not.
Our conversation went like this:
Me: You bought a bag of flour that cost seven dollars???
Him: Yeah, but it’s great! It’s going to help me get this sourdough right.
Me: Yet, I’m not the one who does the grocery shopping because I buy too much extra stuff???
Him: Well, yeah. But this is just one thing! And think of all the money we’ll save on buying bread. And it’s bread that will make us feel better!
Me: …
A few weeks ago, after I tried a bite from about the 7,654th loaf of sourdough bread he’s made since we’ve been quarantined, I finally said the magic words, “Oh my God—this one tastes good.”
My husband was thrilled. “Really? You’re not just saying that, right? You like it? You really like it?”
Calm down, Sally Field. This isn’t Oscar-winning bread.
But I had to admit that it tasted good.
And while it’s risen more than it had previously, it still has a ways to go in order to reach sandwich size.
So now he’s working on that.
I suggested that he wait three days to see if it rises again.
Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, who has learned much more about bacteria and yeast than she ever really wanted to, still loves her husband and continues to write “Wojo’s World®” from her home office in Baltimore, Maryland. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.