Taste Lost and Found: Or, You Can Always Count on Bread

In early October I was drawn into a long text debate with my college girlfriends on whether or not, given the ultimatum, you would give up bread or potatoes. Firmly Team Bread (as in keep the bread, ditch the potatoes), I was shocked to discover that a small number of these people I loved and trusted would actually give up bread in favor of potatoes. There were people in my corner, people I respected, who were firmly Team Potato.

This felt incomprehensible to me. I couldn't imagine anything better than a fresh loaf of sourdough right out of the oven. The debate quickly grew past the borders of our text thread. Stuart rightly pointed out that a burger may be lacking without fries, but it is certainly lacking more without a bun (and hey, there's always onion rings). For a week I asked most people I encountered: bread or potatoes? Then, in an unrelated twist, I stopped asking anybody because I spent ten days quarantining in half of our apartment alone. I had COVID.

There is something surreal about getting COVID right now. We're almost two years into the pandemic and despite the bleak rise and fall in numbers, in many ways (maybe especially in Alabama...) life feels relatively back to normal. There's the disbelief of having avoided it all this time compounded by the dread of finally having it. Thankfully I'm vaccinated, but it is still unsettling to come down with something that's killed over half a million people in this country -- over five million worldwide. It's a mixture of gratitude, a sense of surety ("it could be worse") and slight panic at recognition of the symptoms you've been anxiously reading about in the papers for months and months; shortness of breath, fatigue, and of course, loss of taste.

I lost my taste about halfway through and didn't fully gain it back for a good two weeks. During that time I panic-scrolled articles about people who never regained taste or smell and tried to train myself to smell again. The panic came from just how depressing losing taste was. Taste is more than pleasure from food (though pleasure counts too!). Taste is comfort, and memory, and commensality. Taste is safety (as evidenced by the uncertainty that comes from truly not knowing if yogurt is spoiled...).

Most foods tasted like nothing. A few of them, like salty ones, tasted bad. But there was one thing that continued to provide some relief. That was bread.

1920's advertisement for Fleischman's Yeast (courtesy of Monmouth University's amazing collection of food advertisements)

Also, before we move on, can we just talk about this "Boy Trap" series that Wonder Bread did in the 1960's. As if bread needed an additional selling point?

Apparently bread is pretty great even when you can't taste it. It helps if it's warm bread, slathered with (also tasteless) butter. After all, butter is still delicious fat. But it doesn't even have to be good bread. I had equally euphoric COVID-no-taste eating experiences from my freezer stash of homemade bread and whole wheat toast from Aldi. Eventually, my taste came back (to my great happiness), but I didn't forget how bread had carried me through. I had reached new heights of Team Bread and it was time to re-start my sourdough.

I have an on-again, off-again love affair with this starter. I've kept it going for several years. At times it has yielded regular loaves, and thrived: bubbly and fresh. At other times (like it did before this more recent re-start) it sits neglected in my fridge, subjected to irregular feedings while we treat ourselves with loaves from Beehive Baking.

But it was time to show my starter some love. For the last week it's been sitting on my counter and I've enjoyed the routine of it. I take out my kitchen scale to measure the flour precisely (half whole-wheat, half White Lily bread flour), mix in the lukewarm water. I admire it's growth. Every day it seems to be stronger. And I'm looking forward to baking my first loaf in months, and eating it fresh out of the oven, able to taste every bite.

A return to sourdough of course means a return to sourdough discard -- lots and lots and lots of it. I most recently used mine to make the Clever Coconuts' Ultimate Sourdough Banana Bread. I made a few alterations. I threw in blueberries for a burst of something fresh, I subbed in half whole-wheat flour to make it a sturdy breakfast, and I glazed the top with dark chocolate that had been melted with a little bit of coconut oil. Why not?

I'm not including a typed out recipe today because truth be told, I stopped following the recipe a few minutes in. I'd encourage you to just follow the hyperlink above!

Because there are times for kitchen scales and times to mash some unmeasured bananas. I poured maple syrup straight from the jar (I subbed it in for some of the sugar). I added an extra spoonful of flour to make up for it. I threw things into the bowl of my stand mixer until it looked about right and I baked it until a chopstick came out clean.

Sometimes, life just feels too short.