Bread

I have written before about making bread. This morning's loaf was another lesson. Bread is an amusing teacher, once the baker gets beyond hope for perfection or predictability.

I recently bought the wrong yeast. This probably seems an esoteric statement to a non-baker. But yeast is alive and displays all the eccentricities of life. It responds differently to weather conditions like humidity, temperature and barometric pressure.

This wrong yeast is simply an active dry yeast, produced by a major manufacturer and marketed in supermarkets in a small baby-food-size jar. The right yeast, in this case, would have been the "quick rise" breed, made and marketed similarly by the same manufacturer. A minor distraction of my mind led my right hand to reach for the wrong jar on the supermarket shelf last week. Now I have a $7.00 jar of this wrong yeast.

So, setting up my no-knead bread (recipe available by request) yesterday afternoon included the wrong yeast, which I am determined to make the right yeast for that particular application. At least until the $7.00 jar is emptied. 

Voila! After its overnight brewing, minor folding, relaxing, redistribution in a roasting pan, proofing and baking, my bread sits cooling on its wire rack. And it is gorgeous. It is overall taller than the quick-rise loaf. It browned more deeply. It smells wonderfully different from the quick-rise loaf as well. I am delighted. The final proof is in the tasting, which will occur at lunch. I will sit across from Peter and watch his face as he crunches the first bites. He is my bread taster and connoisseur. He bakes as well, and I return the delightful favor of tasting his productions. His challah would make a Jewish mother disbelieve that a goy like Peter could master it.

So what's the lesson? Well, today's lesson from bread was a reminder that mistakes are opportunities to be optimistically creative. The linear think of "I want" or "I need" can get in the way of new discoveries. Life does not easily deliver whatever we want or need. Learning to train the mind to shut off the stuck whining of "I failed!" or "Woe is me!" is incredibly valuable. Learning to accept mistakes with the same enthusiasm as glorying in successes is a developed skill. It has been a precious one in my far-from-perfect life.