That looks fantastic. Look how smooth

My sourdough journey started with a man named Mr. Sherman. A fat Jewish baker. When I was 22 and still in the military, I rented a small place from him in Germany. He owned a bakery downstairs. To “keep the rent low,” he put me to work in the shop. Looking back, he probably just saw a strong young soldier who could haul 50-pound bags of flour. So that’s what I did. I carried sacks, cleaned up, moved trays. Mostly I just watched. At the time I didn’t realize I was being educated. Every Thursday he made challah, and people would line up outside for it. Only once a week. I asked him why it was so special. He stopped what he was doing, looked at me, and said, “Come here, Henry. Wash your hands.” That night he showed me what that bread meant. The braids represent unity and community. The round shape symbolizes the unending cycle of life. Before the bread went into the oven, he’d take a small piece, wrap it in foil, and place it in the back of the oven as an offering. Then he’d say a quiet prayer. I still do that today. Every single time. Before that night, like most Americans, I thought bread came in a plastic bag and lasted two weeks on the counter. Mr. Sherman’s bakery was the first place I saw what real bread actually was. Mixed that morning. Fermented properly. Shaped by hand. Made by someone who understood that what he was doing mattered beyond the transaction. Once you’ve experienced bread like that, you can’t go back. You can’t un-taste it. You can’t unknow what it means. That realization eventually pushed me to write “The Loaf and the Lie,” which is the story of how we lost real bread in America when industrial baking took over in the mid-20th century, and why so many people are finding their way back to it now. For me, it all traces back to a baker who told a young soldier to wash his hands.