I fell for the craze. When the lockdown started, I began looking for new pastimes, skills, or hobbies to engage with in order to kill the, seemingly endless, extra time. I have always enjoyed baking but I never gave sourdough a second thought until…

The Guardian’s Adrian Chiles wrote an article called “I have finally mastered the dark art of sourdough baking. Here’s how to do it”[1] where he, basically, recommended a book - Sourdough by two Norwegian bakers Casper André Lugg and Martin Ivar Hveem Fjeld saying that, that book holds the secret he has been unsuccessfully chasing since 2014.

Coincidentally, I also had a £30 birthday voucher for Daunt Books from my parents-in-law and so the plan hatched. Daunt Books delivered the book in about a week and I gasped for breath when I saw all the “tools” required for a simple bread consisting of water, flour and salt. As I was far from being alone in this urge to sourdough-bake, it took another month to get all the required items.

Finally, I started with the starter. Duly weighing, mixing and scrutinising it daily in a borrowed Kilner jar. I named the starter Stuart and watched it bubble, give hope and expire all within one week. When I complained to my experienced octogenarian breadmaking friend he suggested I put the jar with the starter on top of the boiler to keep it warm. Eureka! This is where Alan Bennet comes in.

A week or two before the lockdown, I was scouring Crystal Palace charity shops and I chanced upon a weighty tome of Alan Bennet’s Untold Stories. I dutifully purchased it, carried it home and placed it on my new bookshelves. There it sat until I realised I needed to weigh the Kilner jar’s lid down with something heavy to keep it somewhat closed but not airtight during the starter’s fermentation on top of my boiler. The weighty tome proved to be just the right size and suitably obliged. Starter Stuart III came to live and is still going strong in my fridge.

I am sure I could come up with a better suited replacement to keep the Kilner jar half-opened and half-closed but why fixing something that ain’t broken? I feel qualms about not reading the book even though it has been providing so much support to me for weeks, yet I also take pride in my thinking outside the box and inventiveness when it comes to the use of books. I know I have more books than many people may deem necessary or even appropriate but I have clearly demonstrated that there is more to them than meets the eye.

Books will earn their keep in multiple ways, if you let them.

[1] Chiles, Adrian, ‘I have finally mastered the dark art of sourdough baking. Here’s how to do it’, The Guardian (8 April 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/08/coronavirus-crisis-loaf-bread-sourdough-bake-off-flour-yeast-lockdown