Once the pandemic hit, the types of content shared in my bread baking groups on social media slowly began to shift. As grocery store shelves thinned out, there were desperate pleas to buy flour and yeast from fellow bakers. Hoards of new members began sharing photographs of their sourdough starters; the new ones were welcomed with names, while the old ones were mourned when they stopped bubbling. What's more, a certain genre of video began to dominate timelines.
The videos all began in a similar fashion. The camera would linger on a bulbous, smooth ball of airy dough until a hand appeared out of frame to punch the center like a boxer jabbing at a bag. It would, of course, deflate, and the camera would again linger on the indentation. The comments section was populated with some variation of the words "so satisfying."
