(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Hunger Issue: The Story of a Ukrainian Sourdough Starter in Exile [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-23 Editor’s Note: This is our second to last issue on The Daily Kos. Many thanks to Markos and team for featuring and sponsoring us! If you want to continue reading The Counteroffensive, will you sign up for a free or paid subscription today? By: Felicity Spector and Tim Mak As Katrya Kalyuzhna fled her hometown of Kherson due to the Russian invasion, she grabbed the things most precious to her in the world: her two cats, of course; the keys to her van… … and her precious, five-year-old sourdough starter. Katrya’s sourdough starter For non-bakers: the starter is a paste which is necessary for the making of bread, a living blend of naturally-occuring bacteria and yeast that, when treated well, will help sourdough rise. "It was 12 hours of horror, rage, danger and fatigue", she says of her departure, "going through so many Russian checkpoints, their questioning and other disgusting things: driving through the gray zone, the no man’s land between occupied and Ukrainian held territory, we heard the sound of artillery shelling, it was endless." In the relative safety of western Ukraine, Katrya slowly began to recover from the trauma of that journey, processing the loss of her hometown and its violent seizure by invading forces. About a week after arriving in Lviv, she tried to do what had always made her calm: baking. Using the sourdough starter which she had brought along for the 600 mile journey, she made what she dubbed her “bread in exile.” Baking, it turned out, was incredibly healing. She even posted the brief recipe on her Instagram, and other people started using it. The social media app led her to a new friend, a woman named Vasylyna, who also lived in Lviv. Vasylyna offered Katrya a job at her microbakery, a one-woman business making small amounts of bread and other pastries out of an apartment on the outskirts of the city. There, Katrya could carry on cooking dishes from Kherson, and they soon found they were able to learn a lot from each other, sharing recipes and ideas. Vasylyna and Katrya at the bakery Nowadays, regular customers just come and knock on the window to order things – soups, pastries and dumplings, and getting involved with a 'no-knead' bread dough which they had adapted from a Tartine Bakery recipe, including a particularly delicious beetroot pizza. While their story is heartwarming, wheat in Ukraine has a dark history too. During the Soviet-made famine known as Holodomor in the 1930s, millions of Ukrainians lost their lives after the USSR confiscated grain and food, trapping people in their homes to die of hunger. Katrya feels there are echoes of that time in today’s war. She describes recent attacks on grain infrastructure in Odesa as “horrible and devastating.” A year ago, she watched as wheat fields burned near her hometown. “I was overwhelmed by a panic attack, then I burst into tears. I felt helpless. It was totally shocking!” she said. She says her understanding of history taught her that Russia had deliberately destroyed Ukrainian food resources in the past. But Katrya, who had her own home-based bakery business back in southern Ukraine, insists that she will continue to bake no matter what: “no Russian will stop me,” she says, as she nurtures her precious starter, watches it grow, shapes it into loaves. Vasylyna packing up bread The pair have managed to keep on working despite many winter days in the blackout of electricity cuts, many hours taking shelter from air raid sirens and missile or drone attacks on the city. Now, they even have a market stall at weekends in central Lviv – and everything always sells out. Occasionally Katrya talks of those dark days of living in occupation in Kherson at the start of the war, and the time it took to recover from the trauma of seeing their home town overrun by Russian troops, until the moment they seized the chance to escape. "We lived under that stress for forty days", she says, "and afterwards, it took forty days to get over it. My mother was under occupation for six months and it took her that same amount of time to recover." And cooking, the rhythmic making of dough, the folding of dumplings, the stirring of soups, has been one route back to humanity. Katrya wanted me to take some of her starter back to the UK so that her friend, the chef and cookbook writer Olia Hercules, could bake with it too. She carefully dried it out by adding flour and wrapping it in a plastic tub, the better to survive the journey. Katrya taking buckwheat and rye loaves from the oven I took that precious starter to Olia, along with some rose petal jam and pickled walnuts which I had bought in southern Ukraine. Katrya says she wants people to keep baking her recipe "to honor all Ukrainians alive and dead, those who are resisting! In bread we trust." Sourdough made with ‘Bread in Exile’ starter The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber! Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. Russian military forces hit Ukrainian grain facilities for a fifth day this week, its latest usage of hunger as a weapon. The overnight attacks in Odesa killed at least one person. Meanwhile, 22 were injured, including four children -- and at least six residential buildings were damaged. The strikes damaged some 25 architectural monuments in Odesa, according to United24, a Ukrainian government-linked group which shared this photo. In addition an Orthodox cathedral was struck. Rescuers pulled an icon devoted to the patron saint of the city out of the rubble, according to the NYT . Moscow withdrew from a UN-brokered grain deal that allowed the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea earlier this week. Ukraine's exports are a major source of food throughout the world, meaning that the expiration of the deal -- and Russia's apparent warning that Ukraine ought not to try to continue exporting grain -- will lead to price shocks across the developing world. The grain destroyed by Russia this week could have fed tens of thousands of people for a year. "Some will go hungry, some will starve, many may die as a result of these decisions," UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told the Security Council. Olga Skabeyeva, a prominent Russian television presenter, rejoices over the attacks in Odesa this week. But the war has had a prolonged impact on Ukrainian food production. Ukraine’s battered agricultural sector is thought to have lost around $34 billion since the full scale war began. And Russian forces have destroyed farming infrastructure and grain storage facilities worth billions more - while vast swathes of farmland are heavily mined. LATEST ON THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: Ukraine and its western allies knew that Kyiv didn't have the necessary training and weapons to dislodge the Russians from the front even as they started the counteroffensive this Spring, the WSJ reports . "They hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate…" But Ukraine has still not committed the vast majority of its reserves to the cause. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, Zelenskyy said that there may be an increase in the tempo of the counteroffensive soon, and that the delay was due to, as ISW put it , a “lack of munitions and military equipment, such as mine-clearing equipment, and continued Ukrainian training abroad.” The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber! Hi, it’s Felicity here. In my day job I’m a television journalist, and was first based in the former USSR back in 1991/1992. I’m also a keen amateur baker and like to photograph it all on Instagram. The author’s instagram feed. Over the last year, I have traveled many times to Ukraine in support of a non-profit called Bake for Ukraine. It was started by Ukrainian friends who provide financial support for bakeries which give away free bread to people in need. I have many contacts in the baking world and last summer was able to source new equipment and supplies which we took to Kyiv by convoy. Since then I have managed to travel around the country to meet the bakers the charity supports – as far east as Kharkiv and south to Odesa, and most recently to help purchase a large mobile bakery which can provide a more flexible solution to the food supply crisis. Let me take you on a journey through the places we’ve been: All of the bakeries stayed open thanks to volunteers working long hours, raising money, mixing dough and shaping loaves, preparing tons of vegetables, and delivering food parcels to front line villages and troops – often taking considerable risks to get there. The Good Bread bakery in Kyiv The charity has just started sending help to Oksana, an amazing lady who runs a small volunteer bakery in Kherson. She sent word that it had been badly damaged in a rocket strike, destroying one of her two ovens. Bake for Ukraine managed to get together the money for a new one: then the Russians blew up the Nova Kakhovka dam. Oksana wasn’t in the flood zone but the city became even more dangerous under intense Russian shelling. Oksana also co-ordinates local aid efforts, so we asked for a list of what they needed. Our friend Sasha took me round the giant DIY and homewares store Epicentre to load up a car with all sorts of supplies, from disinfectant and insect repellent to towels, pillows and sheets for people made suddenly homeless. Epicentre has everything you could ever want For much of the war, Odesa has been a far safer city by comparison, but it's been increasingly targeted by Russian drone and missile strikes in recent days, since Russia pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal. One night during our stay there, we were jolted awake by some particularly loud explosions: Kalibr cruise missiles had hit a block of flats, along with a McDonalds and a food warehouse, killing three workers inside. All the windows at the polytechnic university opposite were blown out by the blast. Aleksiy, the farmer we'd had dinner with a couple of nights earlier, who supplies our partner bakery with his organic flour, sent us a video in the morning showing his flat covered in broken glass and shrapnel – he lived in the block which was hit. Fortunately he wasn't hurt, but it must have been absolutely terrifying. The flats and offices which were bombed in Odesa In Bucha, I could see how far rebuilding efforts have come – last summer when I drove through the town, the level of destruction was still very raw. A lot of money has clearly been spent on repair efforts: nothing will bring back those who have lost their lives, but at least there are new homes for people to return to, and green space for children to play. We visited a small bakery which carried on working through the darkest days of occupation: for months they gave bread away to anyone who needed it. Now they're able to sell their handmade loaves and buns again, from a table outside the bakery – and thanks to continuing charitable support, they can keep donating bread to the local National Guard and Territorial Defense units which keep the area safe. The Khatynka Pekarya in Bucha Rebuilding a place like Izyum is another level of challenge. However often you see it, driving across the wooden bridge next to the one which was blown to pieces is still a heart stopping moment. You pass burnt-out petrol stations, houses without walls or roofs, and a block of flats which has a huge V shaped gash tearing the entire building in two. Here, the Myrne Nebo charity has managed to set up a kitchen and bakery supplying people with fresh bread and hot food. During last autumn's Ukrainian counteroffensive as the departing Russians bombarded the place relentlessly, people hid in the dark, dank basement which they use as a store room. It was pretty cold down there even in the thirty degree celsius heat of an early summer's day. With the generosity you see everywhere in Ukraine, they insisted we sit down for lunch, laying a table with delicious soup, bread and salad - and pressing a bag of warm, sweet buns into my hand as we left. The Myrne Nebo social kitchen in Izyum Today’s Cat o’ Conflict is this feline who is definitely in charge of this food market stall in Odesa Keeping watch in a market in Odesa. Stay safe out there. Best, Felicity [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/23/2182902/-The-Hunger-Issue-The-Story-of-a-Ukrainian-Sourdough-Starter-in-Exile Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/