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Paper short abstract

The paper analyses microbial-human relations in sourdough assemblages, focusing on microbial work in the setting of artisanal bakeries working with ‘wild’ yeasts and lactic acid bacteria. It highlights the fragile, contested and sometimes unruly relationships between microbial and human co-workers.

Paper long abstract

As human-microbial-environment relations are changing in probiotic societies (Lorimer 2020), microbes are increasingly seen as beneficial and considered desirable co-constitutors of and for human worlds. In sourdough bread-making, yeasts and lactic acid bacteria have long played a central role, although as rather invisible co-workers. Considering changing human-microbial relations, this paper uses both autoethnography and ethnographic material to trace the role of microbial work and the types metabolic and actual labour (Barua 2025) microbes are doing in the making of sourdough bread. By doing so, this paper makes visible microbial-human relations in the context of sourdough assemblages, and the ways in which they shape and are shaped by the conditions of production, consumption and, thus, wider political ecologies. This includes questions that range from the historical and modern use of ‘wild’ yeasts and the techniques and knowledges needed in contrast to working with cultivated yeast, to the socioeconomic impacts of sourdough bread as a trendy product between stylised boutique bakeries and local networks of cooperation and ingredient sourcing. Empirical insights and visual material from artisanal bakeries highlight the fragile, contested and sometimes unruly relationships between microbes and humans as co-workers, and the technologies to capture, tame, and domesticate microbial actors. Focusing on microbial actors as active co-workers and co-creators of human-microbial-environments might allow humans to create more ecologically just and thus resilient natures for more-than-human life.