Lessons from the Loaf

I have always wanted to learn to bake bread. In the long dark days after losing Nicky I decided it was time to start, without really understanding why. I suppose it seemed comforting, life affirming, nurturing for all of us. It was something to do at a time when, in fact, there was nothing any of us could do to make things better.

I wanted to make naturally leavened bread, like the artisan loaves we ate growing up in Portugal. The long fermentation of natural sourdough breaks down the hard-to-digest parts of the grain, adding flavor and nutrients to each loaf. I bought a sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour, and learned to feed and care for it like a new pet. Then came the search for a recipe. I had an ideal oven, a ceramic breadpot, an active starter, and no idea what to do with them.

One night at 2 a.m. I found myself in bed, my computer perched on my lap, certain that if I read just one more article about sourdough, I would be ready to bake the perfect loaf. For a solid two weeks I had been diving into cyberspace trying to figure out how to begin. I discovered an entire underworld of sourdough bakers sharing their precise, exact formulas, posting pictures of mouthwatering loaves, close up shots of breads with varying densities and holes. It was bewildering. I watched videos over and over to see how the baker’s hands move, the way the dough gets flipped, stretched and folded. I tried to decipher the meaning of a whole new vocabulary: proofing, bulking, hydration, levain, crumb. What? That night as I sat in the eerie pool of blue light I was overwhelmed and defeated before I had even opened a bag of flour. I closed the screen and went to sleep.

With the morning light I could see more clearly what was going on: I wanted to master it before I even began. It is so hard to be a beginner. It is uncomfortable. I may be an experienced cook, but bread baking is a specialty and I needed to start from the beginning. “Back up,” I told myself. “You can’t know everything all at once.” I determined I would allow myself to be a beginner, to make mistakes and try again. To learn by doing. Ugh. I hate that.

I ignored all the complicated articles, picked the simplest recipe with the clearest instructions and jumped in. When I pulled those first loaves, hot and crusty, from the oven I re-discovered the joy and sense of accomplishment that are a beginner’s special reward. Those loaves, a little flat, a little dense, made me ridiculously proud. I was hooked.

Soon I was baking a couple of loaves a week and experimenting with different recipes. I began to notice a remarkable phenomenon. Regardless of the details of the recipes, it wasn’t so much what I did with the ingredients, but rather what happened when I left them alone, that made the flour, water and salt into bread.

All those articles that had intimidated me listed precise percentages of flour to water and starter. They controlled water temperature to the exact degree. Each baker had their own method, each attempting to control every detail of the process to ensure “success.” But they all differed from one another. Bafflingly, it seems there is no ONE perfect formula.

I recognize that impulse to nail down every detail, to control it all: that illusion that if we do everything “just so”, we will get the perfect outcome we envision. I recognize it in the way I recognize my younger self in photos from the 70’s, a former version of me with bad hair and glasses I used to think were fashionable. The memory makes me cringe and smile indulgently, with bittersweet gratitude that I have changed. Yes, I too used to think I could control everything if I was just vigilant enough and worked hard enough. And then I had children and the Gods chuckled up in the heavens. I used to think I had some semblance of control until I realized that everyone I loved had their own plans and their own path. I used to think I could control life and the shape of the future and then tragedy stripped that last folly away. I can safely say that thinking I can control outcomes is now a thing of the past. All I control now is my own response to what life hands me, and the choice to step away.

Accepting this is one thing, but embracing the results is another. It has taken learning to bake bread to actually open my eyes to the deep value of what happens when you step back. When baking bread, there is a certain amount of hands-on doing, but the real magic happens when the dough is left alone. In the long periods between mixing, stretching, folding and shaping, the dough sits covered in a bowl all by itself, fermenting, changing, growing and evolving. That doesn’t happen if the baker keeps messing with it. In fact, if the baker is smart she will go do something to take care of herself while the dough does what it needs to do, so that she is ready when it is time to jump back in.

The basic fact of bread fermentation has taught me a profound truth about so much of life. While we like to believe that the more we DO – the more we CONTROL – the better, in fact, the good stuff happens when we step away. Here is a formula that works: Show up, act when required, and then step back and take care of yourself. When we put together good ingredients and then let them sit, we allow magic to happen. It happens with bread. It happens with wine. With pickles, with yogurt and with planting seeds. It happens with children, with relationships, with grief. It happens with life. The magic happens when the Doing stops. The magic happens when we step back and let it Be. Stepping back allows all the hidden, messy, mysterious changes to occur under the surface. Doing Nothing is doing Something Very Important.

Lest you think that is the end of the story, rest assured there is always another round of Doing. The dough has to go into a hot oven and be removed in time to cool. Life is a constant ebb and flow of engaging and letting go. Knowing when to act and when to step back is all part of the learning I am still working on. There is no article to look up on the internet that will teach us that. That will come by allowing ourselves to be beginners, by making mistakes and trying again. Trusting ourselves eventually to know when to take the next step is all part of the process.

I have learned enough now to understand the vocabulary of those complicated recipes, but I still prefer to be more relaxed with my baking. Some days the starter is more active and sour. Some days the kitchen is warmer than others. Some days I use more rye, or add spelt instead of whole wheat. Each loaf that comes out of my oven is a gift. Seriously: a gift, with its own perfect combination of texture and flavor. A gift that brings a blissful smile with the first warm butter-slathered bite. It turns out, if we allow it, there are an infinite number of ways for a loaf of bread to be perfect.