When Italy went into lockdown in March, it became impossible to find face masks, but there was something else that became very rare – flour and yeast. Forced to stay at home, many started indeed to adopt slower daily rhythms and make their own bread or experimenting a bit with other formats such as ciabatta or focaccia. None of us, though, reached the perfection found by Linda Ring.
Inspired by art and nature, the Swedish photographer and stylist turned making bread into an art. Using a bread lame and sometimes following personal sketches and drawings, Ring traces indeed on her sourdough loaves portraits and illustrations employing the scoring technique and transforming a simple loaf into a canvas.
Slow rhythms are the secret behind the process that Ring seems to be using also as a way to detox herself from overusing digital devices and to get her energy back by working the dough with her hands and let the baking process take all the time it needs.
There's a blissful face here, a dove there, and a lovely illustration of a classical sculpture of an elegant woman on another loaf. Something basic, made just with flour, water and salt, becomes therefore a rare work of art that Ring shares with her family, friends and, via Instagram, with the rest of the world.
Ring is not a professional baker, but through her passion she developed something beautiful that could also be seen as a way to react to our consumer-oriented society and return to craftsmanship in food.
Ring is not the first artist who has elevated bread to the status of art: for Sardinian artist Maria Lai bread represented a symbol of life, that's why she made her early sculptures with this material and also created a bread encyclopedia that could nourish the mind and the body.
You wonder if Ring's loaves will catch the eye of some fashion house who may turn the idea around and start making loaves of bread (or biscuits, maybe?) with logos. Fashion brands are desperate at the moment to find new ways to reach out to consumers who may not have the money to invest in expensive clothes and accessories due to the Coronavirus crisis, but who may want to invest in more affordable designer pieces with an art twist. Who knows, maybe the next step for fashion houses will be going from brands to breads…