Why Is Sourdough Bread Having Such A Moment Right Now?

Willa is available for purchase online. She comes in a small brown bag, along with instructions for daily feedings, and it's $18. All you have to do is mix it with flour and water to get it started and fully functioning in your kitchen.

Willa is the name of a homemade sourdough starter created by Hannah Neeleman, who you may know online as Ballerina Farm. Neeleman is the mother and matriarch of a Utah-based family that left New York City in order to start their own farm. Many of her videos on social media feature her creating a decadent, home-cooked meal involving her very own sourdough. Some of the reels and TikToks have tens of millions of views and hundreds of thousands of comments and shares. When Neeleman realized how popular her sourdough content was, she decided to freeze dry bits of Willa and sell them to customers across the country. We can't know how many Willa packets she has sold, but it's safe to say that Willa has been a huge success. Neeleman is one of the leading influencers who has made sourdough sexy again, so of course, her followers are going to pay a few bucks for their very own Willa.

Sourdough Is Having a Moment

All of your favorite influencers are making sourdough bread these days. Hannah Neeleman is just one of many who has managed to turn something as mundane as breadmaking into glossy, gorgeous social media content. The last couple of years have proved that people are extremely interested in learning more about how to achieve this fermented bake. Bakers like Maurizio Leo, Mary Grace Quigley, and Bread by Elise have gained hundreds of thousands of followers with their simple recipes and how-to's that are perfect for beginners. They sell their cookbooks and post drool-worthy blogs. Who knew something as simple as bread could generate such a cult following?

But when you take a look back over what transpired over the last few years, the sourdough obsession begins to make sense. When the coronavirus pandemic first took over the world and everyone was stuck at home for months on end, people were looking for new hobbies to keep themselves busy (and sane). Some people took up knitting, others tried home workouts for the first time, and many decided to start cooking and baking for the first time. With the long stretch of hours that people had on their hands, they decided to take on time-consuming projects. Sourdough was the perfect escape.

In a world that often prioritizes speed and convenience, sourdough bread stands as a testament to the art of slow, mindful baking. Its rich flavor, hearty texture, and unique fermentation process set it apart from other bread types, offering a taste of tradition with every bite. Sourdough is a type of bread made by fermenting dough using naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeast. Unlike most commercially produced bread that uses cultivated yeast, sourdough bread relies on a starter (such as Willa), a fermented mixture of flour and water that serves as a natural leavening agent. The result is a bread characterized by a tangy flavor, a chewy texture, and a crispy crust.

The process of making sourdough bread is an exercise in patience and craftsmanship. It begins with creating the sourdough starter, often considered the heart and soul of the bread. This starter is a mixture of flour and water left to ferment over several days or even a couple of weeks, creating a hospitable environment for wild yeast and bacteria. During this time, the starter must be fed regularly with more flour and water to maintain its vitality. This in and of itself takes immense patience and care. If you forget to feed your starter, you could potentially ruin the whole thing and have to start all over again. It's almost like taking care of a little pet.

Once the starter is active and bubbly, it's time to make the dough. This involves mixing a portion of the starter with flour and water, along with salt for seasoning. The resulting dough is left to rise for several hours in a process known as proofing. During this stage, the wild yeast and bacteria in the starter continue to ferment, creating carbon dioxide that gives the bread its distinctive rise and texture.

The dough is then shaped into a loaf and left for a final rise, or proof. Once risen, it's baked in a hot oven, where the moisture in the dough turns into steam, contributing to the bread's characteristic oven spring and forming the crunchy crust. The magic of sourdough bread lies not just in its unique taste and texture, but also in its digestibility and nutritional profile. The natural fermentation process involved in making sourdough bread helps break down the gluten in flour, making it easier to digest. Moreover, it also enhances the availability of nutrients in the bread by reducing the presence of phytic acid, an antinutrient found in grains.

Sourdough differs significantly from other bread types primarily due to its fermentation process. Most commercial bread, such as white or whole grain bread, is made using commercially produced yeast, which allows for a faster, more predictable rise. This speed and predictability, however, come at the cost of the depth of flavor and nutritional benefits that slow fermentation provides.

The thing about sourdough bread is that it takes a lot of patience, attention, and practice. Your first loaf is not going to be a winner, and you have to learn how to adjust things like the temperature of your water, the level of hydration, and the length of bulk fermentation or proofing depending on the ambient temperature in your kitchen, the level of humidity where you live, and more. It's also worth noting that a loaf of sourdough, depending on what kind you make and the level of hydration, can take about 36 hours from start to finish (this includes the overnight levain, which is an intermediate step between the starter and final bread dough). It's not something that can just be whipped together. You have to keep close track of every single step along the way. For example, during a phase called bulk fermentation, you have to perform these stretches and folds every 30 minutes for 90-120 minutes, so this requires you to be present at home so you don't miss out on the crucial strengthening of the dough.

Sourdough is not for the faint of heart. And it's an at-home project that makes even the most experienced cook or baker feel accomplished. It also has become a visual pillar of the homemaker, trad wife movement that is taking over the internet.

The Trad Wife and Her Sourdough

Social media trends ebb and flow with the rapidity of a tweet. Among the latest to emerge is the so-called "trad wife," a moniker denoting traditional wife, harking back to mid-20th-century notions of domesticity. More than just a passing fad, the "trad wife" represents a cultural shift, or at least, a robust conversation about gender roles and expectations in contemporary society.

On platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, hashtags like #tradwife, #tradlife, and #tradfem highlight posts about the domestic delights of baking, homemaking, child-rearing, and being a devoted spouse. The "trad wife" trend represents women embracing a more conventional, traditional model of femininity, celebrating full-time homemaking, often in a nuclear family structure.

The "trad wife" memes contribute to the popularity and the discourse around the movement. They often depict idyllic scenes of home life and marital bliss, evoking 1950s aesthetics and Norman Rockwellian scenes of Americana. These memes, while seemingly harmless and nostalgic, are not without their controversy. Some critics argue that they glamorize a reductive version of motherhood, which is much more taxing and demanding than it's made out to be, while proponents assert they celebrate an often undervalued sphere of life: the home.

The "trad wife" phenomenon essentially represents a departure from the mainstream narrative that modern women should aspire to careers outside the home. It embraces the traditionally feminine roles of wife, mother, and homemaker, often emphasizing the joys of nurturing a family and creating a loving household. Regardless of what the critics may say about the popularity of the "trad wife," it seems like it's here to stay, and what better way to embody your homemaking skills than to make a beautiful loaf of sourdough?

As women choose to reign over their own home and experiment with new ways to homemake, it only makes sense that so many would be invested in something like sourdough. This type of bread requires you to be in the home, in the kitchen, for hours at a time. Someone who works 8-10 hours a day would be unable to meet all the demands for a loaf of sourdough; they wouldn't be able to complete all the stretches and folds, constantly check on the elasticity of the dough to see if bulk fermentation is finished, or use the finger "poke" test to see if the proofing has come to an end. Sourdough goes hand in hand with the traditional homemakers who are dominating social media. It's a visually stunning way to show off their hard work (which often includes beautiful designs on the top of the loaf).

Some are quick to point out that the sourdough obsession in the context of "trad wife" points to the shallow, superficial interpretation of tradition. While there is great value to having wives stay at home to raise children and care for the family, some argue that this "trad wife" movement has cherry-picked the glamorous parts of marriage and motherhood in an attempt to win the culture war, while leaving out very important pillars of traditional family that are necessary for the traditional wife to flourish, such as extended family living nearby, having a strong support system of sisters, friends, cousins, etc., and successfully juggling all the duties in the home that keep it a tightly run ship. The call to "stay at home and bake bread" may sound fun and cute at first—after all, floating around your kitchen in a pretty apron while you knead dough sounds great—but it could be interpreted as a reductive, tired trope of wifehood and motherhood that doesn't even begin to scratch at the surface of what hard-working mothers and wives do at home every day: educating children on everything from world history to mathematics, contributing to the independent family economy, managing all the cooking and cleaning while pregnant and with small children running around.

Maybe it's not that deep, though. Sourdough is great fun, and it's a project that will bring your family and friends much joy and warmth. It can be a part of your homemaking; it can be a hobby you like to do on the weekends. If it's having a moment, so be it.

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