Leaven: the good, the bad & the Bubbly

Sourdough starter

 Leaven is a fermented mixture of flour and water that, when added to more flour, water and salt, can cause this second mixture to rise. It’s a lot more labour-intensive and finicky to use than the little granules of commercial yeast you find at the grocery store, but yields a more digestible and deliciously sour loaf. A lot of people with non-Celiac gluten sensitivity find that this kind of bread doesn’t cause them any problems because the slow fermentation neutralizes the phytates in the grain.
 
This summer (2018), I decided to give leavened bread, a.k.a. sourdough, another try. My previous attempts had not been successful, and I was determined to figure out what had gone wrong.

If you’re lucky enough to live near a bakery that will give you some of their leftover sourdough starter, you make your own. But for the true taste of your own terroir, you can try to capture the wild yeasts that are already present on your flour and in the air. Just fill a mason jar with a little flour and water and let it sit outside, covered with a piece of paper towel and a rubber band and wait for the bubbles to form.
 
When I tried this in July, I had bubbles after about three days, a sign the wheat had started to ferment. Then began the tedious process of “feeding” the baby starter by scooping half of it out and adding fresh flour and water every twelve hours.  I made the mistake of trying to use the starter about a week later but the bread didn’t rise because there were not enough bacteria yet. After another week or so of “feedings”, the starter began to double in volume in about four hours. The leaven was ready to use.
 
After a little more research, I found a recipe that broke the many steps  of baking sourdough into comprehensible chunks and this attempt yielded two pleasantly sour loaves that had risen almost as much as bread made with commercial yeast.

All those bubbles show the culture is nice and active.

The leaven has doubled and is ready for use.

But it’s not a simple stir-knead-and-wait process. The day before baking, I take the starter out of the fridge and feed it. Just before going to bed, or first thing in the morning, I make the actual leaven: 40g starter, 80g water, 80g whole wheat flour. Once it has doubled, about a four to six hour process, I make the dough from 640 g water, 450g whole wheat flour and 450g white bread flour. This rests for an hour and then, finally, I add the leaven to the dough along with 1 tablespoon of salt and 50g warm water.
 
Every thirty minutes for the first two hours, I stretch and pull the dough and then let it sit until it doubles-- another two hours or so-- depending on how hot it is.
 
The loaf forming step is next. I punch the bubbly soured dough down and divide it into two loaf pans which I loosely cover with plastic and set to rise. If I have time to bake later that day, they rise on the counter. If not, they can ferment overnight in the fridge and go in the oven in the morning.
 
The resulting bread is moist, dense, and incredibly delicious. If it wasn’t so good, I would be pretty discouraged from making it because of the challenge of fitting in all the steps around my full-time job.

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Freshly mixed dough and leaven. It will rise nearly to the top of the bowl.

​However, despite the health benefits of leaven it gets a bad rap in the Bible:

• In preparation for Passover, the children of Israel had to get rid of all leaven, a symbol of the sin of pride, since it is what puffs up the dough. Once a year, they would have had to start their sourdough starter from scratch all over again.
• The Levitical Meal Offering was to be unleavened bread made from fine flour and salt. (Leviticus 2:11-13)
• Jesus tells the disciples to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees”, which Luke explains is hypocrisy. (Matthew 16:6, Luke 12:1)
• Even Paul takes a negative view of leaven in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8:
  

 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (NKJV)

The point is obviously not to stop eating sourdough bread, since Jesus has declared all foods clean. The point is that leaven, visually indistinguishable from the unleavened dough, slowly puffs up the whole lump, a picture of the subtle effects of pride, hypocrisy, malice and wickedness on a community.

So in this context, it’s surprising to hear Jesus say the kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened. (Matthew 13:31). Is Jesus equating the kingdom of heaven to a symbol of pride and hypocrisy?
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What I think Jesus means here is that the kingdom of God

• isn’t visible (leaven looks like dough),
• is slow-acting (leaven takes almost 24 hours to do its thing),
• will eventually be a global reality (eventually the leaven creates tiny bubbles throughout the whole mixture).

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And he may also have been acknowledging that the uneducated fishermen, tax collectors, disreputable women, former lepers and demoniacs that were following him appeared unclean, unlike the Pharisees with their ceremonially washed hands.

Salt Harvesters Credit: wikipedia.org

I learned something else about leaven the hard way. Last week, my bread didn’t rise very well and it was goopier than usual. I thought, did I add too much water? What’s going on? It was only when I tasted it after it came out of the oven that I realized I had forgotten to add the salt.

​Salt, I discovered, is necessary for the full expansion of the leaven.
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Isn’t that interesting? Ring any bells?
 
Salt, in the Old Testament, was a necessary part of the sacrifical offerings, whether meat or bread. Twice a Covenant of Salt is mentioned, once in connection with the Aaronic line (Numbers 18:19) and once with the Davidic line (1 Chronicles 13:5), where salt symbolizes the eternal perpetuity of God’s relationship to the priests and kings of Israel.

​Jesus famously said:
“You are the salt of the earth.” (Matthew 5:13)
And added later:
“Have salt within yourselves and be at peace with one another.” (Mark 9:50)
Paul picks up this analogy and writes:
“Let your conversation be gracious, seasoned with salt, that you may know how to answer everyone.” (Colossians 4:6)
 
If we take these two images together, we can see the kingdom expanding through the world as God’s people speak graciously, have peaceful relationships and walk in perpetual faithfulness.
 
Have you had any experience with using leaven? Do you enjoy sourdough bread? Next time you buy a loaf (or miche or bâtard), think of the beautiful imagery of God’s kingdom slowly expanding “until the earth is full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord” (Habbakuk 2:14a).