These are not easy times, as the coronavirus pandemic has led to mandatory social isolation worldwide. The anxiety of confinement and the fear of contagion coexist within newly-essential customs: home-schooling the kids via teleconference, working remotely and exercising in one’s own home. In Argentina, many have returned to an activity that was often neglected in their normal routines: cooking and, specifically, kneading.
So much so that, since quarantine began in the country, the consumption of flour in households has increased by 70% according to official data. The president of the Argentine Federation of the Milling Industry told the La Nación newspaper that the boom is taking place because, on average, households that previously bought just one package of flour are now buying up to seven to make their own produce in social isolation.
According to a recent report by chef and anthropologist Juan Olsen, “bread is easy to make, it is extremely aesthetic and it is a food that everyone likes”.
These days, terms like “bread recipe” and “sourdough” have seen their Google searches triple. Not coincidentally, social networks have been making fun of the phenomenon with the expression “pan-demia” (“pan” is the Spanish word for bread), in reference to the baking boom.
Of course, Argentina is not alone in this new craze. The Washington Post’s food publication “Voraciously” recently addressed the worldwide obsession with bread.
Whether thanks to a desire to eat healthily, isolation, or both, sourdough has shot to fame in recent weeks. Nowhere more so than on social networks and Google Trends, which registers a sharp increase in searches during the months of March and April.
What do you need to know? Sourdough is a fermentation of flour and water that replaces chemical yeast in bread making. It is made up of wild yeasts that usually come from the same flour. For curious readers, an explanatory video can be found here.
And this is what sourdough bread looks like after baking…
