Tables is a serialized memoir by Jason Rodriguez. It’s about the tables that Jason has known throughout his life, the people who sat around them, and the food that they ate. It’s a story about transitions. Start at the prologue for more background and a chapter list.
Sourdough requires patience. Wild yeast work slower than their commercial counterparts. They like to take their time with a meal of wheat and water, and in doing so they tend to break it into more complex and delicious components. Wild yeasts are more forgiving; their dough is more robust. It lasts longer. The bread you make can stay fresh for days. Sourdough is a weekend stroll through Paris whereas a bread made from commercial wheat is an evening bender in Las Vegas. Paris will stay with you longer; you probably won’t even remember Vegas. All wild yeasts ask for in return is the time it takes for them to do their work.
A jar of starter.
I was never good at taking time. I started working at 12 years old and held a job consistently ever since. I worked in a video store part-time through high school. The summer before college I took my first full-time job to be able to buy my textbooks, working the die cutting machine in the print shop my dad worked for. I started working in the dining hall of my dorm within the first week of classes. By the second semester of sophomore year I had the dining hall job, I was an RA, and I worked as a video game tech at a bar in the evenings. I took a lot of odd jobs in college, too. I babysat. I helped with construction projects. I was once paid to track the caloric intake of this eccentric rich guy. Five days after graduation I moved to DC and started work as an engineer. In DC I picked up side gigs teaching, editing comics, and running comic book workshops. Time is something that always seemed to be in short supply, and when I managed to find some I would fill it with another gig.
I was 37 years old when Ro moved to Germany. The plan was to follow her out there six months later. It was put forward as a fresh start, an adventure. To me, it represented the first time in 25 years that I wasn’t going to be working a steady job. The plan was to work half-time, remotely, and spend the rest of the time writing and cooking, the two things I wanted to focus more on.
Six months later, Germany was off the table and I was now living in a one-income household with a mortgage, pets, the same steady job, and the same side gigs. Everyone loses something in a divorce, I’m not special in that regard. Ro lost things, too. And there’s always going to be some loss that hurts more than others. For me, the most painful loss was losing the idea of having more time. Four extra hours a day to cook and write were gone, just like that, and I was back to trying to balance a full life while squeezing out whatever creative endeavors I could.
One of those creative endeavors, I decided, was going to be baking bread. I grew up in Brooklyn near some life-affirming bakeries. Mazzola’s Bakery, in particular, was as much of a wayfinder to my early years as other important places. It was there that Dad would pick up the Lard Bread and the Cheese Bread before we drove out to visit relatives. It was Mazzola’s that supplied the rolls for our breakfasts every Sunday, which we covered in butter and swallowed alongside giant glasses of milk and, as I got older, coffee. It was Mazzola’s that fed me at 2AM when I was on my way home from a bar after a night of reconnecting with old high school friends. The bakers would be there with the backdoor cracked open, and the intoxicating smell of freshly-baked bread would waft out onto the empty streets. I would knock on the door and slip someone a dollar in exchange for a warm baguette. I’d eat it slowly while sucking down my last cigarette, quietly sneaking into the house so as not to wake my parents.
The first bread I baked was a pretzel baguette. It seemed like a neat trick; if it came out poorly, it would still be something special since people don’t normally bake it. It was also deceptively simple to make: the only added step from a regular baguette is to poach the loaf and brush it with egg. I brought my first loaves to Max and Kate’s for their annual German Christmas dinner. The loaves went fast, the reviews were great, and I had a new project.
I rarely baked the same bread twice. After pretzel baguettes I moved on to white bread, wheat bread, bagels, croissants, and whatever other bread I wanted to try. I wasn’t mastering the breadmaking process. I was skimming the surface, posting photos on Facebook, and already planning my next bread.
And then I found sourdough. Particularly, I learned that bakers make sourdough through a nearly-24 hour process using wild yeast. I was very interested - I just needed to find the time.
Liz and I went to Quito for a week. It was our first real vacation. We walked all over the city, eating empanadas, taking pictures of graffiti, and stopping in the churches we came across. We rarely ate out - we rented an apartment with a grill on the roof and spent our evenings cooking sausages and drinking beers in the cool night air. We spent our mornings in cafes - reading, writing, and drawing. We never had a bad day - even the day I got altitude sickness was spent lying in bed with Liz, watching movies and napping, drinking gallons of water, and talking about our future. We never once checked work emails; we didn’t even talk about work. We cooked, we wrote, and we held each other every second we were together. There was rarely a moment when our hands were not clasped.
A boule of sourdough.
When we got back from Quito, I felt like the future was clear for the first time in a long time. I knew I wanted Liz to be a part of the rest of my life. I knew I had to travel more, take more time away from work. I knew I wanted to spend more time writing and more time cooking. This overwhelming feeling of love and joy came over me and I wanted to capture it. Late in the evening, just out of the cab, bags still packed, before I took the post-international travel shower, I took four ounces of flour and four ounces of water and mixed them in a bowl. I started my starter, and the most important ingredients were the wild yeasts that were on my hands and in my apartment from that moment.
The wild yeasts that were present in my neighborhood, in my kitchen, during the early Fall, at that moment in my life. Some of the yeasts came from Quito. Some of the yeasts were transferred from Liz’s hand, which I held tight as we walked around that city. The yeasts were in that apartment we rented, on those sausages we cooked. They were in the bed that we laid in while watching Casino on the day I got altitude sickness. They were on my breath when I first told Liz that maybe I did want to get married again.
Each day I added more water and more flour and more yeasts that I had picked up during the days that followed. I picked up yeasts from my dogs when they licked my face in the morning. I picked up yeasts from my friends and my coworkers. Our kitchen on a Sunday morning while we worked on a crossword puzzle and cooked eggs. Our living room while we laid around and talked about the possibility of marriage; whether or not we wanted kids. Our bedroom where we read books and held each other and told dumb jokes. The starter kept taking on these moments every day for a week, and then I made my bread.
I made the leaven the night before the bake; I mixed the dough in the morning. I let the dough ferment until noon and then I started the bench rest. I placed the dough in proofing baskets for several hours. Scored the dough and baked the loaves for dinner that night. And we ate the loaves, and they were great. I fed my starter one more time and placed it in the fridge. That was almost two years ago, I still bake with it every week. I’ll write or work on a puzzle or take the dogs for a walk while the yeasts do their job; I take my time, because the yeasts give me time.
Whenever I bake with this starter it tastes exactly as it did when I made my first loaves, after Quito. It tastes like the plans we were making and the projects we were working on. It tastes like a future that was becoming clearer. It tastes like promise and a strengthening love. Every time I cook with that starter I remember those moments. No matter where Liz and I go, when I make sourdough from this starter, it will taste like those moments.
It’s possible that the divorce took away the promise of more time, but I learned how to freeze time into a loaf of bread.