While the social media feed is driven by impulse, sourdough is intentional. It cannot be made on a whim. The starter — the yeast concoction that gives the bread its signature sour taste — when made from scratch, takes at least a week to ferment. Making the bread itself takes a day or so more — eight to 10 hours for the dough to complete its bulk rise, another hour for its second rise and then 30 minutes to an hour to bake.

Your starter requires continuing care, and you get back exactly what you give. To keep it alive, you have to feed it weekly with flour and water. The more you tend to your starter, learn the nuances of when to refrigerate it and when to bring it to room temperature — yeast flourishes at warmer temperatures, so it’s best to remove your starter from the fridge two days before you want to bake — the better your sourdough will be.

Logging on means subjecting yourself to the volatile compulsions of a self-selecting group of screaming avatars as well as your own personal shortcomings — the flaws that cause a person like me or Donald Trump to obsessively use social media in the first place. Sourdough, on the other hand, is refreshingly apolitical and nonjudgmental. When I bungled my very first loaf, there was none of the backlash and public shaming I’d get for an ill-conceived tweet.

I nibbled on my bad bread, threw it in the garbage, gave my starter the love she deserved — yes! she! — and tried again. The best thing about making sourdough, or really any baked good, is that the result is tangible, edible and most important, useful.

A post on a website floats somewhere in the digital content abyss; bread is real. It nourishes you. Karl Marx might’ve been onto something when he philosophized about how being alienated from our labor deprives you of life. And that Communist couldn’t have even imagined Twitter.

Perhaps you’re like me — laden with millennial agita, exhausted by a life that shackles you to the screen — and looking to log off. If you’re not ready for a dog, I’d recommend starting with sourdough. It might not give you the immediate satisfaction of going viral, but as it turns out, making the choice to go fungal is far more satisfying.