- revsierrajoleen
- Apr 9
- 2 min read
The relationship we build with our sourdough spirit is truly magical—providing us with physical and spiritual medicine. The human sourdough relationship is one that has spanned thousands of years across many cultures and continents. Researchers suggest that the origin of sourdough was a bowl of porridge was left out to ferment that was later cooked or baked—however, this is just a hypothesis and the true origins are unknown. “What we know from archaeological evidence is that huge populations were supported with large bakeries of sourdough breads in ancient Egypt. What follows several thousand years of Egyptian civilization are the Greeks, followed by the Romans. “ The relationship with the wheat spirit and the sourdough spirit would be detrimental to many societies survival. Sourdough bread has greater bioavailability in minerals such as magnesium, iron, and zinc. Therefore, one may suppose the relationships developed with the cultivation of wheat and use of sourdough rituals supported our ancestors survival.
The Ritual of Sourdough
Sourdough is near and dear to my families heart—to the survival of our mixed lineages. Even now 200 years after the invention of bread yeast, my family continued to preserve the ritual of sourdough. My Grandmother Joy remembers the prevalence of the tasty sourdough that filled bellies on our family homestead—a medicine that allowed our families lineages to survive the cold winters of the northern United States when fresh foods were unavailable and a horse drawn sleigh was the only transportation in the thick of winter.
The deep ritual associated with sourdough makes for a beautiful expansion of one’s craft and spiritual practice. A healthy robust sourdough spirit is resilient, but in order to become resilient the rituals must occur over time to create that type of vitality. A young sourdough spirit will not become a mature robust spirit without ritual. Through ritual the young spirit is able to grow into a mature and healthy spirit. As you embrace the ritual of nurturing this spirit, you develop a reciprocal relationship—this relationship we develop is beautiful and nourishing on many levels. When we feed our sourdough the sourdough eventually feeds us—physically and spiritually. The sourdough spirit grows from the spirits of water, flour, wild yeasts, and other microscopic organisms. Microscopic organism spirits break the flour down into a more digestible product allowing our bodies to embrace the full medicine that lies within the wheat grains. The combination of getting more bioavailable nutrition and increasing volume of food would have been revolutionary to our ancestors. The greater spirit of the sourdough and the individual spirits contained within supported the survival of our ancestors—continuing to support those of us who embrace the ritual of honoring this deeply established relationship we have with these spirits.
RESOURCES
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899900702010791#:~:text=Conclusions,magnesium%2C%20iron%2C%20and%20zinc.
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