Yuen: Sourdough with a sense of humor is art and therapy for this Minneapolis home baker

If you tried your hand at making sourdough during the pandemic, are you still going?

Four years after his first bake, Eric Almond is still on a tear, while managing to inject each loaf with both artistry and quirk. There probably is no one else in the world doing exactly what he does.

Almond, 65, not only bakes the bread loaves out of his south Minneapolis kitchen with relentless frequency (about every other day). He also considers each loaf a piece of art, often adorning it with a miniature, hand-sketched paper cutout based on a famous image.

Most of his pieces parody classic paintings like the Mona Lisa or photographs like the one of World War II soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima. (Except in Almond’s creation, they are bakers hoisting a bread knife.) Almost all of his works contain an inside joke related to bread-making.

For his take on Gustave Courbet’s “The Desperate Man,” you see the same tortured, wild-eyed artist running his fingers through his hair. But this time, the young man is holding a salt canister.

“Ever forget to add salt?” Almond asked on his Instagram post. (Avid bakers will probably understand this joke.)

Although Almond does sell prints of his artwork, he has no interest in charging people for the loaves themselves. He derives more satisfaction from sharing his bread with family, friends and strangers, and teaching aspiring bakers. “This sounds snobby to say, but my sourdough is not for sale,” he said.

Like many Americans who had too much time on their hands, Almond, a substitute teacher at Breck School in Golden Valley, started making sourdough during COVID-19. He found online communities dedicated to the painstaking science of sourdough creation, where members would swap pictures and tips.

“I loved seeing other people’s bakes, but I started to realize they all started to look the same,” he said. “I wanted to do something a little different.”

Almond studied political science and studio arts while attending the University of Minnesota. He drew editorial cartoons for the Minnesota Daily and aspired to turn it into a career. But life didn’t pan out that way, and he sought work in other professions, from selling cars to teaching kids in afterschool programs.

And then several years ago, while refereeing a youth hockey game, Almond suffered a stroke on the ice. (It’s not clear if it the stroke came first or whether it followed a head injury when he tripped and fell.) He awoke in the hospital “to three neurologists scratching their chins,” he recalled.

An avid runner who for many years enjoyed lifting weights and staying active, Almond spent two months in the hospital and rehab. Stripped of his sense of balance, he could no longer move his body the way he once did. He had to turn inward — and rediscovered his more cerebral, creative side.

When friends and colleagues showed their support during his recovery, his goal was to thank them by baking a loaf for every person who visited him.

And he started to learn things about himself. With every loaf he shaped, scored and baked, the bread spoke to him. It told him: Slow down. Be patient.

Sourdough-making, meanwhile, is part and parcel of his identity. He finds it relaxing and, despite his previous ambitions to be an editorial cartoonist, a refreshing escape from politics.

He’s honed his technique, which varies by each day’s temperature and humidity. He swears by his potent sourdough starter, which he feeds twice a day and affectionately calls his “kick butt starter.” (”It kicks butt first and takes names later,” he says.)

But these days, Almond can’t even eat the brown-crusted mounds he creates. Over a year ago, he was diagnosed with stage 2 throat cancer. Blistering rounds of radiation and chemo followed. The treatments shot his taste buds, and the texture of the bread makes it difficult for him to swallow.

And yet bread-making still gives him joy. He brings about four loaves every Sunday to the First Nations Kitchen, an outreach program of the All Saints Indian Mission Episcopal Church. Slices of his sourdough accompany Indigenous dishes such as bison stew or wild rice and turkey.

“Oh, my gosh, we have some people who say they’re coming just for the sourdough,” said interim director Ritchie Two Bulls. “The sourdough is really a gift. Eric is very humble and a wonderful baker.”

Doctors say he’s now cancer-free.

Almond, who grew up not far from All Saints, said he returns to the church every week so he can stay connected to the part of the city that raised him. Everyone, he says, deserves a nice piece of bread.

And for a man who’s beat cancer and a stroke, the art of baking is sustenance in itself.

“I consider myself on borrowed time — I shouldn’t even be here. But as long as I’m going to be here, I’m going to make the most of it,” he said. “Sharing bread is what it’s all about.”