The Case for Cooking from Scratch
The Coronavirus has exposed some serious flaws in our relationship with food, but in doing so, it allowed us to reconnect with cooking and each other.
The week after my work was put on hold due to Covid, I made asheh reshteh, wontons and wrappers from scratch, Mauritian briani (yes, that’s how it’s spelled in Mauritius), and my very first sourdough loaf. The preparation and cooking times for these dishes range from 3 to 48 hours. I cook all the time, but the amount of tupperware containers invading my fridge and freezer started bordering on absurd. In addition to eating my feelings, I discovered that I apparently cook them as well.
Meanwhile, friends who previously had trouble navigating beyond the frozen food aisle of a grocery store started purchasing dutch ovens, and a new wave of the Sourdough Revolution was taking shape. Only this time, instead of artisan bread shops, amateur home bakers were sprouting all over the world. One of our most active WhatsApp group chats of random news and inside jokes changed its name to Sourdope in the 6 (followed by various emojis of baked goods), and was inundated with weekly crumb shots and kitchen accessory reviews.
There’s no question that Covid-19 has affected our relationship with food and cooking. In fact, Saint Mary’s University, in partnership with the University of Antwerp in Belgium, has launched a new international study to examine the pandemic’s impact on how people deal with food and food-related media. So far, over 30 countries have confirmed their participation on the project.
Global shifts in how we approach food and cooking have happened countless times throughout history. However, this is arguably the first time such a shift is being personally documented and broadcast by individuals all over the world through social media, further influencing their peers to cook this or eat that.
Mainstream media quickly caught on to the sourdough trend. Within weeks of lockdown, international news outlets were trying to make sense of why everyone was suddenly baking bread; a tradition that dates back tens of thousands of years. The answers are varied, complex, and - I would argue - have changed throughout the length of our confinement.
In the very beginning, it was a question of necessity - people were afraid to leave the house and the safety around ordering delivery was debatable. Learning to make such a fundamental staple as bread made sense. As it became clear that uncertain times would be upon us indefinitely, we turned to cooking and baking for comfort. And as we settled into a new normal, cooking challenges such as baking sourdough bread became a way to experience something positive as a community, as though to reassert the fact that we were all in this together.
A Brief History of our Relationship with Food
I think that in order to evaluate the current state of our relationship with cooking, we should take a step back and understand how we got here.
Historically, our relationship with food - and therefore nature, the ultimate provider - has been a turbulent one to say the least. In Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari vividly explains how we’ve gone from a species whose entire existence was dedicated to finding and securing food, to one that now relies on others - of often questionable ethics - to do so for us.
Did we domesticate wheat? Or did wheat domesticate us? - Photo by Abhishek Dekate
For 2.5M years, our nomadic ancestors hunted and foraged without interfering with nature. We ate what the land around us had to offer, and whatever knowledge we acquired was dedicated to building mental maps, memorizing animal migration patterns, and differentiating between edible and poisonous plant species. Our relationship with nature was a healthy and intimate one - we enjoyed the bounty of the land as every other animal did.
Then, only 12,000 years ago, came the Agricultural Revolution. We began to settle down, cultivate land, and domesticate animals. Plants and animals were no longer living beings with whom we equally shared an ecosystem, but things that can be manipulated for our benefit. What scholars deemed as a new era of progress in human intelligence and quality of life, Harari describes as “history’s biggest fraud”. According to him, the Agricultural Revolution brought large bursts in population and a higher risk of famine and disease. Farmers worked harder than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, their diets deteriorated from their dependence on limited crops, and excesses were paid in taxes to the elite.
With the Industrial Revolution, a mere 200 years ago, came the mechanization of agriculture. Humans became more and more removed from the process of getting food from the farm to the table. Food became increasingly mass-produced, as developments in canning and preservation through chemical additives enabled us to keep soldiers fed through wartime. By the 1950’s, TV dinners were invented by Swanson as a marketing solution for what to do with 235 metric tons of leftover Thanksgiving turkey. We continued to overproduce food and started to ditch wholesome slow cooking for heavily processed convenience.
A recent Dalhousie University survey revealed to what extent the regularity of home-cooked meals has steadily been dropping from one generation to the next. Whereas 95% of people born before 1946 regularly ate meals made by parents or caregivers at home, that number has dropped to 64% for Millennials, and 55% for Gen Z.
Today, entire meals can be purchased frozen and microwaved (or better yet, delivered to our door at the click of a button) without the slightest inkling of where the ingredients came from and who prepared them. In a very short period of time within the history of the entire human race, we’ve become increasingly detached from the process of finding, growing, and cooking food.
“At the beginning of the pandemic we were feeling very ‘survivalist’ and hesitant to go out to purchase things like fresh bread.” - Jiajia, Sourdope in the 6
With lockdown came limited access to our food sources and the removal of the conveniences that many of us have learned to depend on. Panic buying was a natural reaction, as our instincts kicked into survival mode - trusting others for our sustenance became a risk. In the second week of March, overall grocery sales were up 46% from the same week last year. Flour sales rose by 208% compared to the previous year for that same week - it was the fourth most purchased food item behind rice, pasta, and canned vegetables. This is notable because unlike rice, pasta or canned vegetables, flour requires more thought and preparation to become something edible, indicating the intent to spend more time in the kitchen. The same Dalhousie University study previously mentioned found that 68.4% of participants expressed a desire to spend more time cooking at home and what better time to do so than now?
“My favourite part of the day is dinner time. It’s the only thing I look forward to. The only exciting part is buying good food to make yummy dishes and desserts” - Ashley, Sourdope in the 6 (Week 4 of lockdown)
As far as coping mechanisms go, cooking is a popular choice; the act of cooking or baking can be therapeutic in itself, followed by the promise of instant gratification. For years, mental health clinics have used culinary therapy to treat depression, anxiety, eating disorders, ADHD, and addiction. Dr. Nicole Farmer, researcher at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, specifies that “people who tend to define cooking as cooking from scratch often get more enjoyment and more fulfillment from cooking. This is a bit intuitive — hitting the microwave button doesn’t really involve you in the process.”
While my cooking rampage supports all of this, baking sourdough in particular is still an odd choice. Reading through any recent article describing the process as “simple” or “relaxing” makes me question whether these journalists have ever even tried baking sourdough themselves. A look back at Nick’s first crack at it in The Art & Struggle of Sourdough is a much more realistic portrayal of the process; learning to bake sourdough is a commitment to almost absolute failure, at least in the beginning. It’s an exercise that will try every last bit of patience left, already made low by living amidst a global crisis. I gather, through anecdotal evidence, that on average it’s only by loaf 5 or 6 that you start feeling that you’ve made a good loaf, and only by loaf 10 that you notice consistency in the results. In the end it’s incredibly rewarding, but only if you’re willing to accept initial failures. So why sourdough?
“I think something about sourdough as compared to most other types of cooking is that it imposes a structure on your day. We all lost our structure when the world changed, and had to rebuild routine.” - Beth, Sourdope in the 6
Whether it’s baking sourdough or cooking anything that requires time, patience, and focus, I believe that beyond positive feelings and instant gratification, it restores a sense of balance. For those of us who got thrust into the work-from-home life unprepared to deal with the challenges of self-discipline among the many sources of distraction, baking sourdough allowed us to organize our day around stretch and folds, establishing timed tasks and prescribed breaks. For those of us who stress ate throughout the first few weeks, cooking helped us find our way back to healthier eating. And for those of us experiencing stress and anxiety over the chaos and uncertainty that had befallen us so swiftly, cooking gave us control over something that can constantly be improved and enjoyed. In hindsight, Sourdope in the 6 was in reality a support group.
The pandemic forced the world into a shared experience marred by tragedy and fear, without the comfort of holding our loved ones close. Through it all, we found creative and innovative ways to connect with one another. In fact, I’ve seen my family more in the past four months than I have all of last year.
“I think part of it is that I recognized the need to do something stimulating / new to fill the monotony. And the desire to participate in something that so many others were doing - it felt social even though it was in isolation, and anything social was good.” - Eric, Sourdope in the 6
Through themed Zoom drinks and dinners, it became commonplace to pick a dish or a beverage and to prepare these together live. With the sourdough trend, people around the world came together in overcoming a challenge that they could achieve, not only with practice, but with the support of a global community. In many ways, we’ve built even stronger connections in isolation and more surprisingly with people with whom we’ve lost touch or even with complete strangers.
If there’s a silver lining to all of this, I believe that it’s finding new ways to connect with things that we lost or neglected long ago. In the case of cooking, this time has compelled us to reconnect with nature and with food not only as a source of sustenance, but as a source of nourishment and comfort. I’ve always believed that cooking from scratch inevitably grants us a deeper understanding of our world, connecting us to where and who our food comes from, and the nuances of their culture. Cooking naturally fills us with the appreciation to consciously make better choices.
As restrictions are being lifted little by little, and the world begins to slowly and cautiously open up again, we’ll have the choice to resume our old eating habits. However, as with everything else with our new normal, there’s no going back to exactly how things were before and maybe that’s a good thing.
Most members of Sourdope in the 6 have admittedly stopped baking their weekly loaves - a handful persevere and will continue to do so, perhaps for the rest of their lives. In time, someone will find another clever name for our What’s App group and maybe by then, we’ll be able to hug each other again. Though one thing’s for sure: not one of them will ever complain about the once balked-at $8 price tag on a sourdough loaf.
Words by Kimberley Kwo. Photos by Kimberley Kwo, Abhishek Dekate, and the intrepid bakers and cooks of Sourdope in the 6 .