By Bread Alone: Baking as Leisure, Performance, Sustenance, During the COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

As the coronavirus crisis worsened, a series of news stories documented “panic buying” on grocery staples, including bread, yeast, and flour. News outlets began reporting what I had already concluded based on my own social media: in response, many people had started baking bread. Baking specialty bread, like sourdough, is a time-consuming process, which pre-COVID-19 was a leisure activity for some. Baking bread during isolation is an activity whose purposes are threefold: providing sustenance; filling newly available leisure time; and offering a way to demonstrate one’s skill and activities on social media. I consider the sudden attention given to this niche area of cooking, and the ways that bread-making-as-identity is already being disputed online, with attempts to frame an increased interest in what is, ultimately, successful completion of domestic labor, as a threat to ‘authentic’ interest in specialty bread as culinary capital.