Feminist Blogger Uses Her Vaginal Yeast to Make Bread

ZOE STAVRI IS a feminist blogger. A few days ago, she announced that she had thrush and floated the idea of making bread with her vaginal yeast.  She wasn’t joking. “It all started with a fatal combination of a slightly perverse sense of humour, a keenly scientific mind, and touch of the thrush,” she writes on her blog Another Angry Woman. [12] Stavri has started making sourdough bread with yeast extracted from her vagina and is now documenting the whole thing on social media.  [10] Stavri has been tweeting about her culinary journey, giving candid details on how she harvested the yeast for the sourdough starter, and what recipe she used. [11]  Zoe Stavri has documented the details of her unusual baking experiment on social media and, unsurprisingly, it’s caused something of a furore. [1] She even came up with a nice hashtag for it #cuntsourdough.  Stavri, who admits to having a ‘slightly perverse sense of humour’ and a ‘keenly scientific mind’ realised she was suffering from thrush on Saturday but decided that rather than resolve the issue with conventional treatment, she would make the most of the additional yeast she was producing.  Using a sex aid to retrieve the yeast from her vagina, Stavri used it as a base ingredient for sour-dough, a loaf which often takes several days for the ‘starter’ dough to ferment.  The experimental baker added her self-made ingredient to flour and water and then watched as the fermentation process began, taking pictures along the way. [1]

The photos documenting the unusual bread-making method has received an onslaught of comments with many people accusing Stavri of being ‘mentally ill.’  Stavri, who admits to having a ‘slightly perverse sense of humour’ and a ‘keenly scientific mind’ realised she was suffering from thrush on Saturday but decided that rather than resolve the issue with conventional treatment, she would make the most of the additional yeast she was producing. [1] Naturally, because  the idea of bodily fluids in baked goods makes some people very, very upset, Stavri has gotten her share of criticism. But not to worry, any health concerns about the safety of consuming food made with vaginal yeast are minimal.  [12] She writes:

First things first, any bacteria which lives in your warm soft parts lives there because it likes to be warm. Body temperature warm. It dies outside of that temperature range. However, let’s assume for the sake of argument that my vagina harbours a strain of bacteria that thrives equally in the ~37°C environment of my cunt as it does at the ~22°C of my kitchen, inside a bowl of flour and water. Were this the case, it still wouldn’t matter. I’m making fucking bread. You cook bread. All of the bread will reach the bacteria-murdering threshold of >70°C for long enough to kill anything that had survived.

So what’s the verdict? “It tasted like a pretty damn nice sourdough bread,” Stavri concluded. “After having a little bite, I ate a slice with butter. The bread was still slightly warm and the butter soaked in and it was absolutely heavenly.” While acknowledging its very possible the sourdough rose and baked of its own volition (i.e. without her vaginal yeast, of which she only had a very small quantity in the mix) Stavri says she plans to bake more moving forward using her leftover starter, with pizza and/or bagels maybe coming up next. [5]  If you’re interested, you can read about Stavri’s baking adventure at Another Angry Woman. [4] The lunatic feminist also ask the public to finance her delirium as she is currently looking for “patrons” on patreon.com. [6]

As far as the social media backlash is concerned, Stavri wryly pointed out that their horror had less to do with food safety concerns and more to do with the knee-jerk disgust directed at vaginas. “I am very interested to note how many people are horrified at the very notion that something may have once been near a vagina,” she wrote. [4] (Similarly, Westbrook noted to the Huffington Post that she was “surprised” by the lack of information regarding vaginal flora during her vaginal yeast yogurt experiment, which could contribute to such violently negative reactions.) As important it is to discuss the misinformation and mystification surrounding vaginas, though, I digress. Stavri herself says that her experiment wasn’t any sort of feminist statement; she just wanted to know if it would work. [4]

This is by no means the first bodily fluid to bizarrely be used as an ingredient. Remember Beard Beer, brewed with the yeast from a brewmaster’s goddamn face? And earlier this year, a woman made yogurt from her vaginal yeast and ate it with some blueberries. [12]  During a collaboration project in 2013 artist Sissel Tolaas and biologist Christina Agapakis challenged themselves to make cheese using microbes from human toes, armpits, belly-buttons, and tongues. [7] One company made the controversial move of using breast milk in a vanilla ice cream aimed at adults.  [1] Royal Baby Gaga ice cream is the brainchild of breastfeeding campaigner Victoria Hiley.   The 30-year-old mother from Leeds collaborated with London-based ice-creamery The Licktators to launch the dessert in celebration of the birth of Princess Charlotte earlier this year. [1]  For those who now feel compelled to make their own special sourdough, Dr Helen Webberley from Oxford Online Pharmacy has issued a few words of caution.  She tells HuffPost UK Lifestyle: “While moulds and funguses have been used in cooking for years, we should never consider eating anything that could contain human genetic material.  “The vagina hosts numerous bacteria and organisms, some of which can be infective.  “This is clearly a health hazard.” [8]