A Sucker For a Story

 "Do you like stories?" he asked. "I've got a 60-second one that I can tell you in 59. And it even begins with Once Upon a Time," he added for good measure, as I stepped closer to his tented space at the Bentonville (Arkansas) Farmer's Market.

I had stumbled upon the town square of white tents on Saturday morning as I waited for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to open at 10:00.  Bins of fresh vegetables, bars of goat's milk soap, farm-fresh eggs gathered from humanely-raised chickens, and jars of Ozark honeys and jams surrounded Pop's Southern Sourdough table. All tempting, but no one offered to tell me a story. 

Once Pop (Dan Maestri) said the word story, he didn't have to say another word. Not a single word to entice me toward his loaves of homemade bread or spiraled rolls slathered with cinnamon. Little did he know that the word story to a writer is a magnet. He could have been selling cilantro, which I hate, and I would have been all ears. 

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"Once upon a time," he began, "when I was teaching school, "one of my students brought me a loaf of bread her grandma made. It was some of the best bread I had ever tasted. I asked for the recipe. Her grandma sent me the recipe and something even better, a piece of her sourdough starter."

"She'd had that starter for 50 years. . . 50! And I've had it for 25." He paused momentarily for the math to sink in. "This bread here," picking up a loaf of rosemary sourdough, "has the same DNA as bread made 75 years ago." Then he lost me in the  biology and chemistry details – yeast, lactic acid bacteria, metabolism, fermentation . . . 

As someone who's never baked a loaf of bread from scratch, much less tried to keep sourdough starter fed and happy, I can't begin to appreciate Pop's commitment to his breadmaking. What I can appreciate, through, is the sense of history his loaves and rolls represent. Generations of hands repeating a process to bring bread to their tables, to feed families and friends – perhaps a hungry stranger or two. 

"My bread's a little different from the West Coast variety. I put a bit more sugar in mine," Pop offered, which reminded me of my grandmother's cornbread. She always added sugar to the batter. I wondered if that's what makes Pop's Southern Sourdough more southern. Regardless, it makes for a good story.

​I selected a loaf of rosemary garlic (no garlic in today's batch) after Pop spiced up his story with details of  chopping fresh rosemary himself and sprinkling it in the dough.

"You can eat it as is," he explained, "but it'll be a tad doughy. "It's best to bake it for about 10 minutes until it's nice and brown, then slice it up and dip it in olive oil." 

Seemed like a perfect ending to me, except that I should have bought two loaves and a cinnamon roll while I was at it.

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** Pop's Southern Sourdough Bread is served on selected days at Eleven Restaurant, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas