Sourdough & Slow Baking

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a kitchen when bread is proving — a hush that feels almost holy, as though the house itself is holding its breath alongside you. I have known that quiet for more than half a century now, standing in my little Cotswold kitchen with flour on my apron and a cup of cooling tea forgotten at my elbow, watching a cloth-covered bowl for signs of life the way one watches a sleeping child. Bread, I have always believed, asks nothing of us except time and attention — two things the modern world seems terribly reluctant to give, and yet two things that return to us, when we offer them willingly, a satisfaction quite unlike any other. This book was not written in a hurry, and I would ask that you do not read it in one either. Let it sit with you as a good loaf sits — slowly, gently, filling the room with something warm. Whether you are meeting your very first starter with a mixture of hope and bewilderment, or you have been baking long enough to read a dough by feel alone, I hope you will find in these pages what I have always found in the baking itself: not merely bread, but a way of moving through life with a little more patience, a little more presence, and a great deal more pleasure.

Sourdough frightens people, and it needn't. It is the oldest, simplest bread there is — flour, water, time and a little patience. I have kept the same starter alive for over twenty years; I call her Bess, and she has raised more loaves than I could count. In this book I take you gently by the hand: how to begin your own starter, how to feed and love it, and how to turn it into bread that will make your whole house smell of Sunday. There is no rushing sourdough. That, my dear, is rather the point.

— Agnes