I took up sourdough baking during the pandemic (didn’t everyone?).

Nothing fancy. Just crusty loaves for soup and toast. Sometimes a soft sandwich bread or homemade pretzels. I still keep up with the hobby because it brings me joy that I can make magic out of nothing but flour, water and salt — and time.

A few weeks ago, I visited a gathering of favorite aunts — Kathy, Karen, Kim and Judy — plus a couple of second cousins I don’t know as well, Stacey and Shirley and Margaret. These lovely ladies are descendants of the Rodabaugh arm of my large extended family, as am I. What a great time we had catching up on each other’s kids and grandkids and even great-grandkids. Talking about life and love and travels and trials.

After the conversation turned briefly to my sourdough hobby, Stacey said she wanted to send me something: My grandmother’s sourdough crock, gifted to Stacey some 20 or 25 years ago by my beloved Grandma Johnson, who was Stacey’s Aunt Phyllis.

About a week later, it arrived in the mail, very carefully wrapped in as many layers of bubble wrap as it had seen years of use, I’m sure. I cried when I opened it (as all my aunts knew I would). Here was a simple stoneware crock, chipped in a few places, well loved, its utility outshining its beauty. I loved it instantly. Even more, I love its story.

How many children have been fed the bread from this crock? How many smears of blackberry jam and dunks into nourishing soup have its loaves engendered? How many Rodabaugh women have smiled on taking a golden, crackling loaf from the oven, a loaf that started its life in the crock that now sits on my kitchen counter, full of bubbly, breathing sourdough starter?

I baked again that weekend, my first few loaves since my starter was re-homed into Grandma’s crock. The bread sprung up in the oven, rising high before darkening into a beautiful golden brown. It smelled divine and was most excellent with the tomato soup I made.

The bread I made, though, is not just mine. It is the result of all that came before it — all the women who labored in all the kitchens throughout time to learn the alchemy that is breadmaking so they could teach it to their daughters and granddaughters.

Every sourdough starter, too, is the product of what came before it — generations and generations of yeast and bacteria nourished by breadmakers and crock keepers through history, augmented by the wild yeasts of their environment, until the starter that sits on my counter and makes my bread is as unique to my kitchen as I am.

And now my sourdough starter has a home with its own history, the generations of bakers who nurtured their starters in Grandma’s crock.

“I believe your grandma gave it to me to use and hold onto it to eventually give it to you,” Stacey told me after the crock arrived in the mail. “Now your grandma will be a part of your bread making.”

I truly hope so.

The whole process of sourdough baking is a synergy of science bordering on witchcraft. But isn’t it also possible that it carries a rich lifeblood of family and history and love? Flour, water, salt and time — and love borne of and nurtured in this humble crock.