A girl and her starter

This warms the cockles of my heart.

Whatever those are, they're warmed.

Cockles are clams, right? Clams don't go with hearts. It doesn't make sense.

She told me that she's interested in learning to make sourdough bread.

I told her by text message how to get started with producing a sourdough starter.

She didn't do it.

Simple as it is, it seems too much like magic. I sense hesitancy at failing at magic.

I sent her two samples of extremely powerful Denver sourdough starter in dry powder form with instructions and insight and remarks.

I could write a book. Honestly. Off the top of my head I could easily write a whole book about sourdough bread. Including ancient history, naturally fermented bread across cultures globally, through dark ages, Renaissance to discovery of yeast cells and modern production.

To my shock and dismay my little note printed to six pages. Now she's going to think I'm some kind of loquacious professor. I considered reformatting to itty-bitty font size, but that would be even worse. So with deep reservations I sent it.

And that turns out by serendipity the right thing to do, because girls like her appreciate personal attention. If no one-on-one special and unique attention is given then that shows you don't care about them. A personal letter with apposite instructions means that I care about her, about something she wants, and six pages means I really really care.

Who knew?

I know this because she shows the letter in all subsequent relevant messages where it's not necessary.

The letter is her treasure. I did not expect that.

We're presently texting. Her starter separated and she thinks that's catastrophe. It actually means the starter is telling her to go faster with her feeding cycles.

She's well on her way to outstanding bread. If she follows instructions and gets this starter bubbling fiercely, with this starter that's just a few days, and then patiently ferments her dough, possibly use Jim Layhe's no-knead technique, this bread is going to blow her precious little mind. Because there isn't anything else like it. There just isn't.