Marta Dzedyshko

7 Reasons Why Sourdough Will Continue To Save Your Life This Pandemic

1. It gives you the company of something living.

The few “artsy” friends you had before global lockdown have since transfigured from eccentric to erratic, either resulting in their abandonment of you or your abandonment of them. In any case, you never felt spending time with them was a good use of your life, and while you enjoyed the experience of saying you had friends, this gratification does not outweigh your disdain for people or their questionable hygiene.

2. It gives you something to do.

Have you become dependent on consistency and scheduling as a means of fortifying your delusions of structure and productivity? Well, add “feed the starter” to your compact list, wedge it somewhere between Do the Dishes and Zoom Shabbat, because it’s still important that you have viable excuses for getting off the phone with your cousin, who is determined to boycott restaurants that require masks, your manic-depressive uncle, who has been “really into orthopedics lately,” or your mother, who has really begun to see the merit in 50 Shades of Gray.

3. It gives you a sense of achievement.

Do I really need to illustrate your emotional depravity and desperation for a sense of personal worth, competence, and contribution?

4. It gives you self-sufficiency.

Make bread to affirm your ability to sustain yourself. A feeling of self-reliability, particularly regarding one’s ability to feed oneself, is essential for feeling if not human, alive in some capacity.

5. You’ll have bread.

If you’re like me, you’re hungry. While a thick slice of bread can be filling and temporarily satiate the bottomless pit that is your appetite, it will also spike your insulin levels, giving you the needed energy to complete your six minutes of “restorative yoga” while ensuring an alarming and abrupt drop of blood sugar just in time for your four o’clock nap.

6. It’s a vehicle for leftovers.

Anything can be a sandwich.

7. You can prove to yourself and others that you are, in fact, functioning.

Because if you can’t manage to mix a few tablespoons of water and flour daily, you need to know.

Listen, your neighbors, romantic partner(s), and/or roommate can no longer stomach your air-fried eggplant medallions, nor were their digestive systems prepared for the cumulative gallons of probiotic Nordic yogurt you very literally funneled down their gullets every day for a year. In light of the toilet paper crisis, this was a critical error, and you paid severely when after a particularly memorable evening of poutine you made the grave mistake of trying to flush paper towels. It’s time to get your life back, and what better way than by nursing a sentient, room temperature jar of a bacteria-ridden liquid mixture?