In the Oven
I bought a breadmaker a few months ago and I can't stop baking bread. There's white bread, sweet bread, cranberry bread, wheat bread, cinnamon raisin bread, pumpkin bread and i made a sweet wheat bread accidently but it turned out incredible. Have you ever taken a bite of hot fresh bread and not thought "wow, I love that"?
The thing about baking bread is that it takes time. You can't microwave it. You can't get it in a drive-thru. You have to wait, sometimes more than three hours. The anticipation makes my mouth water, the aroma calms me. What amazes me most is yeast. A thumbnail-sized amount of these little tiny specs makes all of your other ingredients puff up and expand into soft chewy dough.
Bread baking is counter-cultural. I live in the northern most point in Orange County, CA and I could throw a rock into LA County. Surrounded by the endless pursuit of activity and money. Nobody waits for anything here, especially for food. I could walk a mile in any direction (except directly west because I'd run into the ocean after a few blocks :) ) and have my choice of at least 8 fast food restaurants each direction. People slam the gas pedal down to the floor to get to the next stop light before the guy in the car next to them. People here just don't wait. That's not how things work here and if we're made to wait, that means something is wrong. I'm guilty too.
But baking bread has brought me back to something. Patience. Patience means reward. If I wait for the dough to rise and the bread to bake, I get something incredibly satisfying to my pallate. I love it. I'll wait for it and it's worth it. What if our culture were characterized by patient people? What if people enjoyed the few minutes here and there while in line somewhere because they knew the down time was good for them? What if we enjoyed the discipline of patience and saw the character that it builds?
Bake some bread my friends. And enjoy every moment of it.
The thing about baking bread is that it takes time. You can't microwave it. You can't get it in a drive-thru. You have to wait, sometimes more than three hours. The anticipation makes my mouth water, the aroma calms me. What amazes me most is yeast. A thumbnail-sized amount of these little tiny specs makes all of your other ingredients puff up and expand into soft chewy dough.
Bread baking is counter-cultural. I live in the northern most point in Orange County, CA and I could throw a rock into LA County. Surrounded by the endless pursuit of activity and money. Nobody waits for anything here, especially for food. I could walk a mile in any direction (except directly west because I'd run into the ocean after a few blocks :) ) and have my choice of at least 8 fast food restaurants each direction. People slam the gas pedal down to the floor to get to the next stop light before the guy in the car next to them. People here just don't wait. That's not how things work here and if we're made to wait, that means something is wrong. I'm guilty too.
But baking bread has brought me back to something. Patience. Patience means reward. If I wait for the dough to rise and the bread to bake, I get something incredibly satisfying to my pallate. I love it. I'll wait for it and it's worth it. What if our culture were characterized by patient people? What if people enjoyed the few minutes here and there while in line somewhere because they knew the down time was good for them? What if we enjoyed the discipline of patience and saw the character that it builds?
Bake some bread my friends. And enjoy every moment of it.
posted by Mark Chapman at 11:32 PM
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