Sourdough is the yeast of our problems

Are radical lesbians dictating what we can and cannot eat, through the offices of this very magazine? It would certainly seem to be the case. A year ago this month, Julie Bindel wrote on The Spectator’s website disparaging sourdough bread with even more venom than she reserves for her more usual targets, i.e. those men-lady people and er, men. What has happened since that vigorous diatribe is the gradual disappearance of sourdough from the shelves of our supermarkets, as if by official edict. Marks & Spencer used to be full of the stuff, but my two local stores no longer stock packaged sourdough and the same is true to only slightly less a degree with Waitrose. I will not bother mentioning any of the other supermarkets as I assume you are as unfamiliar with them as I am.

Anyway, Julie was absolutely right to assert that sourdough seemed almost to hold a monopoly on the bread counter – and it had long since pushed out focaccia. Now focaccia has made a comeback, even if most of the focaccia in supermarkets is dry as dust. Julie was also right, I think, in her aversion to sourdough, which she suggested had taken hold of us during the Covid lockdowns. It is appalling, jaw-breaking stuff, takes an hour to toast and tastes of carpets. I first ate it in San Francisco in about 1990, when it was used to house the overrated clam chowder I had ordered. Nobody thought of eating the bowl afterwards. Its ubiquity on bread counters – and the consequent absence of any other forms of bread other than common or garden white and brown sliced – was extremely irritating and so I give grateful thanks to Julie for her intervention, even if I am disinclined to approve in principle of lesbian activists dictating what we can and cannot munch on when the mood takes us.