Sourdough & Slow Baking

A Word Before We Begin

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.

— Agnes