It should be emphasized upfront: the primary motivation was neither self-improvement nor altruistic baking for loved ones. It was fear of shortages.

Along with family, I was out of the country when COVID-19 began its wildfire stage. We returned to grocery shelves mostly still normal except for whole corridors emptied of toilet paper. But just days later half-empty shelves became the norm.

Flour started to vanish. Especially wheat flour, my favorite for bread. And yeast. My alarm rose. Amid such big fears as socioeconomic collapse, loved ones getting sick, or I myself being infected post-heart surgery,  I was beginning to experience my day-to-day pandemic concern: fear of shortages.

What if I couldn’t have bread? Especially wheat bread? The antidote became clear after several days of researching the flour/yeast supply challenges: sourdough starter! You can grow sourdough starter from flour and water. Eventually it feeds its way into creating its own sour-tasting yeast mix.

That didn’t solve flour shortages. I’ve not figured out how to fix these by, say, growing and grinding my own grains, but only by watching for sources of the occasional five pounds here or there. I try to accept that as anxiety producing as the erratic supply is, the situation is dramatically less problematic than billions of people have long navigated every day.

So far the flour has not run out. More amazingly, the yeast keeps growing as the starter thrives on. I experience a bit more fully now the power of the Old Testament story of the widow of Zarephath, who has “nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

But the prophet Elijah, confronting barren land after God has stopped rain, is out of food. God promises the widow will feed him. Elijah tells her to keep implementing her plan but first to make a little cake for him and then one for herself and her son, because “The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” And so it happens (1 Kings 17: 8-16). It may not have been sourdough but it sure reminds me of it.

I‘ll never forget the surge, so intense I discovered the blood pressure I regularly measure had soared, when on the seventh day of feeding my sourdough starter doubled and more. And when dropped in water to test its potency, it practically leaped out, so energized it was.

My family is bewildered. This is not the Michael they know. He’s made it all the way to Medicare without even hinting at the urge someday to bake bread. Now he feeds his starters, Paulette (who eats unbleached flour) and Buddy (who eats wheat flour plus unbleached white) whenever they become exhausted.  In an effort to experience more hints of the Zarephath miracle, he also does not throw out starter discard (a byproduct of feeding the starter) but offers it to waffles and English muffins.

Lo, the recipients of this version of flour and oil are enthusiastic. They plead for an inexhaustible supply. I do my best to provide.

And recently I discovered the joy of providing not just the baked goods but spreading their source across the country. As so many of us have experienced worldwide, COVID-19 had inflicted trauma on West Coast children, grandchildren, and grandparents. Joan and I had previously relied on juggling vacations but often also work travels to include stop-offs in the West. But now such options to bridge the gap between East and West Coasts were blocked. We risked soon going for a year without visiting grandchildren growing up as fast as spring corn stalks. Various risk factors made flying seem unwise. Finally we settled on doing what we could with masks and careful stops to drive and meet halfway across the country.

What balm for traumatized souls. Older grandchildren Kadyn and Maya, eight and four, never before having experienced sourdough baking, each took delighted turns helping to mix and knead. Then my daughter Kristy had an inspired request: Could she take some starter back West? Carefully the feeding and dividing was done, and a starter child born from starter that had by now thrived across some 10 states headed forth across more states and miles.

A week or so later, as we mourned the renewed chasm of 3,000 miles between households came photos from Kristy: bread and muffins made from that sourdough.

When Maya who had helped make bread with me realized her mom was using a version of PawPaw’s starter, she was thrilled.

Through sourdough I’m nurtured—to my surprise given just trying to fix anxiety—in ways that help me grasp why so many new bakers have turned flour and yeast scarce. Sourdough doesn’t fix pandemic nightmares and deaths. But it can feel like healing balm on the wounds.

—Michael A. King is publisher and president, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. He writes “Unseen Hands” for Mennonite World Review, which published an earlier version of this column.