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Today is bread-making day. I've made and eaten my own bread off and on (mostly on) since 1970. My first loaves were tasty but dense. Neverthless, I sold them to the local health food store in Athens, Georgia for 50 cents apiece. (Just barely 18 at the time, I'd recently returned from an extensive hitchhiking trip and been kicked out of the parental home. Suddenly I had to support myself, so I bought a 50 pound sack of whole wheat flour and some yeast ....)

 

In 1978, after I moved to Missoula, Montana, I was still dissatisfied with my leaden loaves. I bought a copy of the Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown—I'd heard this Zen monk was the definitive authority of good basic bread making.  Try as I might to follow his basic recipe, however, my bread lacked enlightenment. It made the kitchen smell nice and was tasty as toast, but my loaves weren't good for much else.

 

 

Over the years, I tried a number of other bread recipes. One tasty recipe for a bread made with oatmeal I found in one of the Moosewood cookbooks gave me hope; but while that produced a light loaf, it was loaded with sugar, butter and white flour. Hardly the result I was looking for.

 

Then, 6 or 7 years ago, unpacking after our move to Frankfort, Michigan, I found my tattered copy of the Tassajara Bread Book. This time I discovered a section where the author narrates and illustrates the process of making bread. I couldn't recall ever having seen this before! Since I was working from my original copy (the one pictured here), however, I must have skipped over this part in favor of the more streamlined recipe that appears later in the book. (How like me to skip steps!!!)

 

Brown's instruction here was far from exacting, but with careful study I actually came to understand the various principles underlying a successful batch of bread. More than simply learning how to get it to rise properly (don't stint on yeast!), I also figured out variations that would make the bread uniquely mine. Since then I've consistently turned out the loaves I'd been aiming for the best part of 4 decades. I can truthfully say the loaves I've just removed from the oven—good for toast and sandwiches!—have taken a lifetime to bake and taste great with butter.

 

The process of art-making for painters is similar to bread-making for bakers. "Getting the feel" for what constitutes the art you want to make counts for as much or more than precise techniques for pulling it off. Best of all, once you start trusting your process, you can put those recipes aside: The artwork you want to make is within you—it's your work of art to let it out.

 

 

 

 

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