AUGUST 2020 23A Sourdough Starter Grows in
Brooklyn Tracing the journeys of
tiny tubs of flour, water, and hope
By Margaret Eby
WHEN I SET OFF FROM MY BROOKLYN APARTMENT on a Sat-
urday morning in mid-March with 19 pint containers of
sourdough starter, New York City had been in lockdown
for a week. I am, by nature, a restless person, unable to
sit on the couch for more than 10 minutes without pop-
ping up to do some task from an unspooling list in my
head: Check on my fruit inventory, simmer some beans,
text my brother. With the onset of COVID-19, there was
no clear way for me to be useful, Venmo donations and
social distancing aside.
However, I did have one resource that was suddenly of
value thanks to a growing commercial yeast shortage: a
bubbly, active sourdough starter named Enya. In the Before
Times, offering sourdough starter to anyone was like
hawking Great Dane puppies—cute, but my God, who has
the energy? As quarantine set in and New Yorkers started
to see the outline of how much time we’d be spending at
home, I offered starters via Instagram story to anyone
within a couple miles of my house. I got over a dozen
replies in 24 hours, with more trickling in from friends
of friends or sourdough-curious neighbors as the week
went on. So I fed Enya a huge helping of flour and water,
split up the discard, wiped the containers with Lysol, and
started walking.THE OBSESSIVE
If you trace the 11-mile route I took to drop starter at
doorsteps and on street corners (while also offering tips
on baking and miming hugs from six feet away), it would
be full of switchbacks and odd loop-de-loops. Sourdough
starter isn’t a particularly impressive gift—no matter how
you gussy it up, it’s still a tub of beige goo. When you
give someone a starter, what you’re really giving them
is potential. Like the world’s gentlest pyramid scheme,
sourdough starter is basically infinite, as long as you have
flour and water to feed it. It will keep for years, poten-
tially decades, tucked in the back of your fridge, a prom-
ise of future nourishment, given the addition of effort
and wheat.
As the pandemic raged on, the starters I gave out were
fed, split, and given out again. Over the following weeks,
the dividends began to pile in: photos of freshly made
boules, awkward first attempts at sandwich loaves, crack-
ers, and English muffins. I saved them in my phone in a
file marked “GOOD BREAD THINGS.” Each one was, and
still is, a little sliver of hope.illustration by SIMONE NORONHA