The Sourdough Starter I Named After My Ex

How baking bread became a queer ritual to transform, wait, and give myself the food I deserve

Photo by Ben Stein on Unsplash

I began to keep a sourdough starter the week after my girlfriend moved out. Not the ex I named it after—that happened later. This was Sarah, who had left three years of shared life in Northern California to take a job in Seattle and start fresh without me. She took the coffee maker, the good knives, and the belief that I was someone worth staying for.

The sourdough starter began as a prank. My buddy Miguel, a professional baker, told me I needed a hobby that demanded daily care. “Like a plant, but you can eat it,” he said. I replied that I’d killed every plant I’d ever had. He gave me a jar of his own starter—murky sour-smelling, and full of life. “This is different,” he explained. “This has a will to live.”

Sourdough starters consist of wild yeast and bacteria colonies that can survive forever if you feed them flour and water. This technique dates back thousands of years, with people handing down starters through generations like family treasures. I decided to call mine Veronica when it was two weeks old. I chose this name after my ex who broke my heart at 24 and showed me that love can be beautiful yet dangerous.

Naming it felt right. Both Veronica and the starter needed constant feeding, care, and pardoning when I messed up, which happened often.

In the beginning, I was awful at it. I skipped feedings, ignored the discard step, and watched the starter split into a watery liquid that reeked of acetone. The loaves I made were as heavy as bricks and felt like wet cement. My housemate cracked jokes about using them to prop open doors. But the routine had a calming effect on me. Two times each day—at dawn and dusk—I nourished the starter. I measured out flour and water. I mixed. I covered. I waited.

Being queer in a Filipino-American family means you’ve spent your life learning patience. You wait to find the right time to come out, or you stay in the closet. You wait for family members to stop asking about boyfriends. You wait to see if the girl you’re dating will show up at family gatherings or if she’ll keep you separate from her life. You become skilled at waiting.

Bread taught me a new type of patience—one that’s useful. Sourdough fermentation can take anywhere from 8 to 48 hours based on temperature, hydration, and starter strength. You can’t hurry it up. You can’t make it rise when you want. You need to listen to what the dough is showing you, not what you hope it will show.

Six months in, I made my first good loaf. The crust made a crackling sound when I cut it. The crumb—what bakers call the inside texture—had an open and airy structure, with uneven holes showing it fermented well. I stood at the counter and ate three slices still warm, with way too much butter. I got a bit teary, which seemed silly until I had a realization: This was the first thing in months I’d created that gave me real nourishment.

The hobby has opened up a whole new world I never knew was out there. I signed up for a local sourdough baking group where we swap starters, help each other with crumb structure issues, and get into hydration percentages as if they’re super important. We’re queer, around our thirties, and people who found out that kneading dough for twenty minutes costs less than therapy and feels better than scrolling through bad news.

Last month, I handed out starter to three friends. Each got a small jar with feeding instructions I wrote by hand. “Meet Veronica,” I said to them. “She’s a drama queen, needs lots of attention, and will get back at you if you neglect her. But if you look after her well, she’ll give you bread for life.” They chuckled, unaware that Veronica was once real—or had been, years back, before I figured out that some bonds should break so you can discover better ways to nourish yourself.

The toughest challenge isn’t the method—it’s the belief. Each time I combine flour and water, I trust that microbes I can’t see will do their job, that fermentation will occur, that the dough will expand. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Sometimes I end up with a flat sour disaster that goes into the compost bin. But if I stay patient and attentive, I get bread.

The simplest part is the routine. Twice, I give Veronica food. I do this without thinking now. My hands know the amounts, the texture, the aroma of a healthy starter versus one that’s struggling. It has become a habit of nurturing—caring for a living thing that relies on me caring enough to show up even when I don’t feel like it.

Sarah never got it. She wanted a low-maintenance easy uncomplicated me. But I’m like sourdough—I need regular feeding, attention, and the right environment to grow. I don’t feel bad about that anymore.

Now, I bake every weekend. My freezer bursts with loaves. I bring bread to potlucks, give it to neighbors, and swap it for garden veggies and homemade jam. My housemate says our place smells like a bakery. “Like someone lives here,” she said last Sunday, and I understood her meaning.

Someone does live here. Someone who at last learned to nourish herself.

Charlene Trino is a Filipino-American writer based in Northern California. Her work explores the intersections of queerness, faith, and cultural identity. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction and is currently working on a memoir about growing up Catholic and gay in a Filipino immigrant family. When she’s not writing, she’s probably trying a new recipe or arguing about theology with her friends.