Making the Most of a Seasonal Harvest We Never Expected

I stood upon the above-ground platform of the Forest Hills-71 Ave. M train in despair. My messenger bag felt uncomfortably heavy with the remainder of my savings written out in a money order, carefully tucked inside an inner pocket, awaiting its departure from my name. I looked out onto the neighborhood, the office of my future landlord visible from where I stood. In six minutes his office would close for Shabbat, leaving me without a place to call home if I didn’t hand over my deposit in time. I scrolled through the listing on my phone, desperately trying to figure out why the apartment I wanted didn’t feel right. I zoomed in on photos of the sad studio.

It was to be my first apartment on my own in the big city. I imagined entertaining over my grandmother’s Blue Willow collection, presenting friends with generous portions of pasta and grated parmigiano, breaking bread so fresh that it fogged up the two windows in my room. I smiled at the thought of this scene and started walking down the subway stairs. Then, it hit me: There wasn’t an oven. Though cheerfully painted with bright yellow walls, its kitchenette included only a hot plate.

Three minutes.

My phone rang and I recognized the area code of the impatient landlord wanting to know my whereabouts so he could close the deal and continue on with his weekend. Regardless, the following Monday I would be forced to move out of the mold-infested loft apartment I shared with three others. The clock was ticking. In 72 hours, I needed a place to live.

But how will I bake bread? I thought.

Earlier in the day I’d reconciled with my ability to turn the stovetop situation into a culinary challenge. But in my real-estate rush I’d forgotten how helpless I’d be without the therapeutic act of pulling something—anything—off the rack and waiting for it to cool. At 4:59pm I swiped my MetroCard once more and set out to find an alternative. No bread, no deal, I explained to the landlord on the phone. He hung up in a huff, but I could tell he understood, as he himself was heading out to celebrate the start of Sabbath with traditional challah.

Fast forward four months. I awoke with puffy eyes in my new apartment, thankfully complete with a “real” kitchen. My former roommate, Nora, stayed over as the election results ran into the early hours of the morning, too late for her to return to Inwood. We’d sobbed ourselves to sleep in my bed—the glow of my laptop screen wedged between us, displaying the harsh reality of the next four years. But how will we go on? We wondered.

We will break bread, I said to myself instinctively, not entirely sure of its importance at the time.

As she left for work I grabbed Sarah Owens’ cookbook off my shelf and crawled back between my sheets. The front cover of Sourdough read: “Baking with whole & sprouted grains, making the most of the seasonal harvest, and healing the body through naturally fermented food.” I traced over the word “healing” with my trembling fingers and started flipping through the pages of her book, kicking myself for never opening it before. In the first eight hours of our new world, I felt personally responsible for the outcome of the election. Maybe if we’d all baked more bread, shared it with our neighbors, listened, and understood what was going on in our country, we wouldn’t be here right now.

It took 12 hours of total darkness and an email from our Edible Queens publisher to get me out of bed on November 9, 2016. “I will find us a place where we can wallow in good wine,” Claudia wrote me. I threw on a sweater and took the train to Union Square, where a mass of protesters gathered to march to Trump Tower, some screaming “Not my president” as tears streamed down their cheeks. We sought safety inside Laut, an eatery serving dishes from Southeast Asia, where we were reminded to fight for our fellow immigrants, often credited as the backbone of the food industry.

I came home around midnight and sat cross-legged on my kitchen floor, scouring the pages of Sourdough for a solution. Thumbing through recipes for sun-dried tomato shortbreads, buttermilk biscuits, and even braised oxtail tacos, I settled upon page 67, a dough for two friendship loaves. It triggered a quote I’d archived a week before, from kindness advocate and fellow cookbook author Dorie Greenspan:

“As bakers, we never really bake for ourselves—we bake to share,” I heard her say on a recent episode of Radio Cherry Bombe.

Mulling over these words, I stared ahead at my oven—an acting agent of change—and started making the most of the seasonal harvest I never saw coming.

Sourdough: Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More. By Sarah Owens (Roost Books, 2015)

Sarah Owens | @sarah_c_owens
Laut | @lautnyc
Dorie Greenspan | @doriegreenspan
Radio Cherry Bombe | @cherrybombemag