I want to get some sourdough bread starter.

I’m not sure why. In a way, it’s an unlikely thing to do. As far as I know, sourdough is a pioneer tradition, from the U.S., and it’s not something that the Welsh people are really familiar with. When I asked him about sourdough, Rich just looked at me blankly.

But I have this little idea, that keeps niggling at me, to get some starter. I have this picture in the back of my mind of a pioneer woman in a covered wagon, setting out for parts unknown, a calico poke bonnet on her bowed head and a wooden bowl of sourdough starter on her knees, headed for the new world. That sourdough is her security – her insurance. No matter what happens on the long, unimaginable road to the place she doesn’t yet know, she will be able to make bread for her family. As long as she has her sourdough, she can feed the people she loves.

I suppose I’ve done just the opposite – I’ve left the new world, to come back to the old. Maybe I want some sourdough as insurance for my journey, as well.

The thing about sourdough is that it’s lineage food. You can take a little bit of it, and make your bread. Save some back, and it will make another batch. You can keep it indefinitely, passing it down from generation to generation, keeping it alive. A little bit of the old world, alive in the new.

In Ireland, they have the same idea with kefir, a fermented milk product that is like yogurt.  My Irish friend Barbara told me this…Apparently in Ireland the woman of the house is the steward of the kefir, which they value for its health-giving properties. Like sourdough, you can hold back a bit of kefir and start a new batch with it, so it can be kept going forever. When a son marries, his mother gives a bit of the family kefir to his new wife, thus passing on the responsibility for his health and wellbeing.

I love this idea – the woman as the holder of the family health, using food with history to nourish the family, food that has tradition. Meaning.

Curious as to what’s behind this circling sourdough thought that keeps nudging at me, I look it up online. I am ravished by the images that come up. Sourdough, believed to be more healthful because of the fermentation process that makes it sour, has been used since biblical times. And sourdough is sexy. Legend has it that sourdough bread became popular because of the belief that baking powder was an anti-aphrodisiac. Men who feared losing their virility eating baking powder biscuits chose sourdough bread instead.

Families and bakeries throughout the world own sourdough starters that are many human generations old, revered for creating a special taste or texture. The practice of making and baking sourdough in steeped in tradition and ritual. For thousands of years, the peasant women of Europe in each village all baked on the same day, so that they could use the communal stone bread ovens. Each woman would take her starter, saved from last week’s dough, and mix it with new ingredients. The dough was left to rise -– with a piece held back, to be the starter for the next week. The rest was formed into loaves which were marked with the family sign, the source of the traditional slashing of the bread loaves. The bread was then taken to the village ovens to bake.

The individual, braided seamlessly into the communal. Each family with its distinct own mark – but all the loaves in the same oven. Unique, but connected. I can imagine the fires being lit in the great ovens, the creaking wooden doors, the stones glowing red hot, the loaves being shoveled in, each with a different sign cut into the crust, the perfume of the baking bread, the women gossiping and leaning on fences, gathering around to collect their loaves and take them home…

I read on and learned that you can use sourdough to make cookies, cakes and waffles – or to tan a hide, cure an aching back, as a glue for sealing a letter or a paste to paper a cabin.

I also found something that I should have remembered – that sourdough was the main bread made in Northern California during the California Gold Rush, and has remained a major part of the culture of San Francisco. The bread was so common that “sourdough” became a general nickname for the gold prospectors.

I came here from Northern California, and San Francisco is as close to an original home for me as anything can be. So the thought of bringing a piece of my heritage here, and braiding it into the food traditions that we follow here in Wales, seems right and lovely. A little bit of the new world, here in the old. Food for my journey…

There is also something else that I like about sourdough, and kefir – something that has to do with its ability to reproduce itself, and maintain a lineage through time. I suppose it has to do with aliveness. These things are alive – actual microorganisms, that live and create a certain effect. They ferment the milk, or make the bread rise. They need certain things to survive, and neglect – or too much salt – will kill them. By feeding the sourdough starter – or the kefir, we are interacting with the tiny organisms. It’s like our bull calves, but on the tiniest cellular level. We feed the calves, and the calves feed us. We feed the sourdough – and the sourdough feeds us. A closed circuit of interaction, like touching two wires together and feeling power flow. A relationship.

That’s it – I can’t have a relationship with a plastic-wrapped container of yogurt of loaf or bread that I buy from the shop. It’s dead – an ontological dead end. It doesn’t mean anything. I throw away the wrapping, and eat the product. That’s all there is to it.

But the kefir, or the sourdough – there is a whole world of mystery contained there. It has its story, its legends, its thousands of years of history. I can touch that history, and blend it into my own family’s history. As I use my hands to make the bread, or the kefir that will feed my family, I can tell myself the stories and the images linger in my mind – the women by the stone ovens, the gold prospectors by the fireside, the pioneer woman in her poke bonnet, clutching her wooden bowl…The tiny living organisms in the bowl as I stir it are like a universe in reverse, as small as the stars are distant, world upon world…