Y: Yeast

I liked being weird.

Before the lockdown, I baked 6 loaves of bread once or twice a week. I used my Vitamix to grind whole wheat berries into 12 cups of flour, mixed them with 7-8 cups of watered down yogurt or kefir, and left the mixture overnight. The next morning, I added 2 tablespoons of yeast, 2 tablespoons of salt, 1 tablespoon of baking soda, 3 cups of white flour, 3/4 cup of water, and 1/4 cup of honey, let it rise for an hour or two, divided into 6 loaves, let them rise a second time, and baked them for an hour. My children and I would eat at least 2 loaves on baking day, often 3, and the remainder would do for our lunch the rest of the week.

I don't know anyone else who bakes all their bread from scratch. My mom always baked for us when I was a child, which made me picky - I find the texture of store bread disquieting. But I know I'm unusual; most people don't eat enough bread or care enough about its texture to prioritize home bread baking. I never had any trouble finding ingredients, and completely took them for granted.

Shortly before COVID-19 became a pandemic, I finished the 2-lb Costco size pack of yeast in my freezer. Costco was no longer stocking it, so I got 2 of the little jars at the grocery store instead, told myself to order a big pack online, and forgot. Then a few weeks ago, I realized I needed to get around to ordering yeast online. I placed a pack in my Amazon shopping cart, added yeast to the grocery list, and searched for other items to add to my Amazon cart so I could get free shipping on my order of $25 or more. When I looked again, the yeast in my Amazon shopping cart was no longer available. Also, Ari, who has been doing all the shopping for me, went to 4 different stores and couldn't find any yeast - not even the little packages that would require 2 for a single baking day - in any of them. And white flour was getting hard to find, too - he came home with 2 small 2-lb packs of flour instead of a single 5-lb pack, saying there were no 5-lb bags of any kind of flour in the stores he'd visited.

Bother! I haven't changed my behavior, but everyone else has, and it's shoving me out of my usual routine! Fortunately, it turns out the bread rises some with the baking soda, so our loaves aren't bricks and we still devour 2 loaves on baking day. I was able to find yeast on Amazon, due to be delivered on May 11, almost 2 weeks after I placed the order. So it isn't a major inconvenience. But it does make me think about the fact that our entire society is structured in such a way that things run smoothly when everyone does what they've always done, but you end up with inconveniences to the people who've always done it that way when everyone else suddenly decides to copy them.

Of course, I'm not blaming people for doing more bread baking. It's always been the best and only reasonable thing to do - feed the stuff in stores to the ducks (if you hate them? I've heard it's bad for them) and bake real bread that doesn't turn into play dough in your mouth. I'm glad people are discovering that my way is better. Of course it is! I just need to be patient while the supply adjusts to the new, sensible demand.

(I would be making sourdough, but after a few attempts in a row where my starter grew mold before it really got started, I'm leery of wasting hard-to-find flour on another doomed experiment - since the mold spores are in my kitchen, I doubt they'll leave).