SOUR-dough

BY WILLIAM GEE

Our newfound penchant for all things bread - a harmless hobby or a malevolent insight into people’s copycat disposition

Although Serendipity and I haven’t had the greatest rapport in the past, I have to say that the lockdown has come at an ideal time - in the weeks leading up to our “new normal” I was musing about my lost lease for baking. I was therefore enthralled that, in a moment of quarantine camaraderie, when quizzed on our isolation antics upon our return to “school”, banana bread and sourdough seemed to be a unanimous response. The fact that Google searches for banana bread almost quadrupled between March 14th and the start of April, and sixfold for sourdough in the same time period, proves (if you will) that something more than a moment of cuisine collectivity is occurring. Although I’m sure that after a few weeks of exercising our inner Gordon, many of our waistlines will roux the day we first picked up that wooden spoon, what stuck out for me was not this wish to use every last drop of pantry staples, but rather the herd mentality. 

“Google searches for banana bread almost quadrupled between March 14th and the start of April”

This links back to human nature as a whole, as the “Do as I do mentality” spans centuries; from the Salem Witch Trials and the Stock Market Crash to Hoverboards and Fidget Spinners, it is evident that humans are not only collaborative but copycats. Although a little culinary plagiarism is harmless, the latching onto views simply because they are popular creates a slippery slope of assimilation and the ensuing invisibility of individual thought, that results from years of collective identical views.

So bake to your heart’s content, but next time you feel inclined to take the proverbial rolling pin, make sure that it is due to your sweet tooth and not society’s sweet talk.