Day 52

What if we could watch the process unfold to the smallest of actions?  What if we could play our lives in slow motion mode? That would feel overwhelming.

I don’t see my cells dividing and my hair turning gray. Everything is moving and I am moving. I am not able to zoom in and hold my gaze to see the transformation, but I do see I have changed – I am changing yet a portion of me is still there, the same.

At some point, A culmination of actions can be felt or observed in the world around me and inside the world of me. Because I’ve moved so frequently as an adult, I often think of collective actions and collective memory. My slate has been wiped clean so many times, yet some thread of me continues. How? Who? What remains?

How do I know what I know? And why do I focus on that right now in my life? Is it easier to appreciate the details in our world if things are moving slowly? Or maybe when things spin so fast I  can snatch a little piece of me, of time, that becomes clear.

We move differently in this world at different points. There are lessons I learned in a flash and others that I will be working through my life.

I guess that’s why I love to work with wild yeast. It is a material that is alive and familiar yet full of surprises and mysteries. It is affected by time like I am, andwelcomes different ingredients, methods, hands and journeys. 

There is a lesson on waiting and a lesson on contemplating with each bake if I am able to give my attention – and I want to.

Microorganisms that travel in the air, in my home and in my body get transported to the sourdough starter that waits and receives it. And this ferments flour and becomes levain; then I wait for the levain to ferment the cookies. I wait for the flavors to develop. To our eyes we may see nothing happening until it enters our bodies and we taste it and it becomes part of us. 

I share these cookies with others, like I am a maple tree watching seeds fly away, and they enter other bodies, other lands, passing through & becoming part of us, not in the past or future, but now.

Fermented Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

½ cup cocoa powder

4 tbsp butter room temperature

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups sifted Maine wheat flour 

½  cup squash levain (sourdough starter fed)

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Homemade powder sugar to roll made by blending sugar on high speed blender to a fine powder.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease cookie sheets, or prep with a silicone baking

mat or parchment paper.

Mix cocoa powder, butter, sugar, egg and levain, by hand or with a mixer.

Add remaining dry ingredients and mix until well incorporated

Chill the dough for at least a couple hours or overnight.

I let it ferment for 2 days on the counter, room temperature under 70F. Then moved to the fridge and let it ferment for more than a week.

Scoop 1 tbsp size balls, roll into homemade powdered sugar. 

Bake 350°F for 9-11 minutes.

When baked, the cookies had a richer fudge chocolate taste and notes of raspberries that I can’t explain but delightedly noticed by all members of our family.