Fired Up

By Sarabeth Brownrobie

On a warm summer day at Pine Mountain Settlement School students listened to Tara Jenson explain the science of sourdough bread. The sun streamed through the windows, and the students were mesmerized by the story. They leaned in and listened intently as Jenson explains that sourdough starter only contains two simple ingredients. Flour and water by themselves are not spectacular. The mixture also houses wild yeast and bacteria, and that makes all the difference. It’s not the yeast that drives the starter, she told them, it’s the bacteria lactobacilli that is the hero of this story. It’s the catalyst for the sourdough starter and essential to the transformation of the flour.

Jenson’s own catalyst was a job at a bakery staffed entirely by women in Maine. It was her introduction to adulthood and empowerment. She had grown up baking with her mother, but the communal nature of the commercial bakery sparked something in her. That experience primed her for the many lessons she has learned through her profession. “It’s helped me love math. It’s helped me learn about human history. I’ve traveled and learned from specific people in very different parts of the world. It’s my lens that I see everything through. Even though baking seems very humble and very small, it can be informative,” Jenson explained.

These days you can find Jenson writing cookbooks, baking wood-fired pizzas, and passing on the lessons that she learned throughout her career in the workshops that she teaches. She discovered that these workshops also provide a community that is lacking for folks who bake alone in their own kitchens. Her Appalachian workshops take advantage of the cultural history of the region and its rich food traditions.

“It feels very natural to be making this kind of bread in a place like this. In particular, we teach at Pine Mountain Settlement School, which has spring-fed water,” Jenson explained. “When I make my bread there, all my starters are so happy, and my bread is so beautiful. There really isn’t anything like milling your flour for your bread and using water that comes out of the mountainside.”

Baking at home can be isolating and seeing and experimenting with new methods can bring bakers together.

Jenson demonstrated the physical techniques (even a little flick of the wrist can be a trick to bring dough together in a specific way) that are difficult to write about in a cookbook but become clear when her students can see it for themselves.

“Bread baking is the most basic staff of life,” she said. “You don’t have to know anything about the chemistry or why it’s working, and you can make decent bread. Once you start to investigate the process, however, you can really dive into what makes a consistently beautiful loaf.”

In the classroom, at Pine Mountain, her students took what they learned as they approach the table. They were intimidated at the beginning, but she encouraged them. And so, they gathered. They flipped. They tucked. And they allowed the bacteria to transform those simple ingredients, and that small group of people, into something that nourished them all.