All You Knead is Loaf

Bread is Forking Delicious

Grab a large Pyrex glass bowl, at least four liters large. Add 350mL of warm water about 45° Celsius. 7 grams of active dry yeast^[1], 13 grams of sugar. Mix. Let sit for five minutes. Lean in and waft. That is the aroma of Saccharomyces cerevisiae digesting the sugar and excreting alcohol and carbon dioxide. A scent so distinct we use it to describe other substances. Atop the liquid skims a layer of froth. Firm, it forms a protective shield for the young single-celled fungi to ferment and reproduce.

Add and mix 14 grams of salt. 3 grams of rosemary. 500 grams of flour^[2]. Whilst enhancing the flavor of the bread, the salt regulates the rate of yeast activity. Too much or too little can lead to a final good that lacks structure. Again, lean in and waft. The distinct fragrance of rosemary accents the yeast excretions. With the right amount of flour, what was once liquid becomes a soft mass with a clay-like texture^[3]. Soft, sticky, course, and shaggy. It lacks a cohesive quality, requiring more work to form the infamous texture of bread dough.

Empty the dough onto a counter dusted with flour. Begin to knead the dough. Fold, press, rotate. Fold, press, rotate. As you continue for several minutes, notice how the irregularities in the texture begin the smooth out. The gluten starts dispersed and mangled. Fold, press, rotate. They align, forming long chains of amino acid. This structure is durable, yet pliable. Fold, press, rotate. The air bubbles introduced from the process and the gas from the fermenting yeast become trapped in pockets surrounded by gluten rich dough. Fold, press, rotate. Once the dough is soft, asking to be used as a pillow, kneading is complete. Place it in a large bowl lightly greased, then cover with a moist towel.

Check on the dough occasionally. Rising in a warm environment is the quickest path to finished bread, yet a cooler environment fostering a slower rise yields more flavor^[4]. The yeast has more time to produce the rich palpable taste of bread. The dough is resilient, it will double in size at some point yielding only for a catastrophic baking disaster.

Once the dough has doubled in size, it acts like a heavy balloon. The trapped air is only a thin layer away from escaping. Firmly poke the top. Pop, whoosh. The dome collapses with a gentle exhale. Move the dough to the counter and knead it a couple of cycles. Fold, press, rotate. This redistributes the warmth, breaks up yeast clusters, and releases the toxic alcohol. Plop it into a lightly greased loaf pan and let rise again. To avoid over or under proofing, check-up often. It should increase in volume by only half this time. Push firmly on the top. There should be some resistance as the gluten stretches like a water balloon, but not too much that the center feels dense. Lastly, poke the loaf and observe that it forms a dent then disappears in a few seconds.

Preheat the oven to 210° Celsius. Place the loaf on the lowest rack. As the heat encroaches on the yeasts’ territory, they once again increase their fermentation rate. More trapped gas leads to the final spring in volume. Confined by the loaf pan, the mound bulges over the edge, the iconic bread outline takes shape. After fifteen minutes, open the oven for a bit. Steam and heat escape, carrying the aroma of bread. Ahhhhhh, as primal human nature takes over: euphoria. This action allows the outer surface to begin to dehydrate forming crust. The yeast has perished by this time from the heat. The bread begins to enter its final form.

Ten more minutes^[5]. Remove from the scorching enclosure. Inspect a golden-brown outer shell. Hard and stiff, it maintains the structure as the loaf is removed from its pan. The kitchen becomes saturated with the smell of bread. Knock on the top. Listen to the hollowness echo^[6]. Feel the warmth seep in. A large bread knife with deep serrations is best for slicing. The teeth rattle on the top until they take bite and carve off a piece. More steam escapes without the crust to hold back. A butter knife spreads dairy goodness atop. Melting from the heat, it flows into the spongy texture. Take a bite. The tongue explores the butter filled craters, the crispy and crunchy walls, the crumbs that begin to flee. This is what hours of rising was all for.

All through human development, we reach for help from parents, caretakers, family, friends, and others. They are our bakers. Adding just the right amount of ingredients. Kneading until silky smooth. Providing a safe and warm environment to rise to our fullest potential. Beginning as a single cell, fragile and new to the world, a fertilized egg hopes to undergo mitosis repeatedly until the construction of organic material becomes a fetus. During this feeble stage, the brood seek their caretaker for nourishment and protection. Embedded in our mother’s uterus and attached by an umbilical, she breathes for us, eats for us, walks for us. This symbiosis is the first relationship of our existence and often remains powerful throughout life, only ceasing with death^[7].

For years following birth, even decades, human children remain abreast with their mother. As time progresses, the caretaking role diminishes, and the infant learns self-sufficient qualities and complex thoughts and emotions. Philosophers^[8] argued that at birth infants are born with a Tabula Rasa, blank state in English. Only enough knowledge how to sustain life such as breathing, all that which makes us human is a result of our rearing. Our nurturing is the dominate influencer of personality and that nature, genealogy, has minimal impact. This view places a significant burden on parenting.

Parents provide this personality molding at a young age, setting the tone for further development in a child’s life. The use of games to teach social interactions and skills such as truth, patience, teamwork, communication, and conflict resolution is often used once children learn how to talk. Adults likely woe the opportunity to play duck, duck, goose for the fifteenth time that day. Their children, young and innocent, ask endlessly to subtlety learn how to assess others, targeting those who are least attentive for the best chance to avoid being tagged. These games primarily take on a everybody wins mentality, or the elder participants will reduce their effort and involvement to allow the young to win. Building a desire to play based on the jubilation of winning allows more complex games to be played without discouragement. Then the effort restores to a more competitive level to foster sportsmanship. That joy wasn’t from winning but instead playing a fun game with others who care for you.

Enriched with continuous learning, the mind grows from these experiences. Adding fragments of personality traits to one’s once blank slate. If this state of innocence is hastened or prolonged, difficulties later in life emerge. Traumatic experiences quickly take hold of innocence and embeds conscious and subconscious feelings that greatly affect one’s personality. Most serial killers suffered some type of maltreatment during childhood. On the other hand, children with overly protective parents that maintain their innocence for as long as possible can foster feelings of shame or self-doubt and inability to express oneself without feeling anxious. As with most things, life is a careful balance of various factors. Too much or too little and all hell breaks loose. Hopefully during development, these narrow margins widen to allow larger swings of stimuli. A physical analog to emotional hardening, a small amount of foreign material from a vaccine allows the immune system to prepare a defence against a real attack in the future. Sometimes these experiences are too much to handle and one’s mental state deflates to a low. Family and friends help to mend the holes, allowing oneself to rebuild the mind. This restored mental state has improved structure. Strong, it can withstand more turmoil.

A rapid change of the human mind takes place during puberty. Over a couple years, it matures significantly. The dominant drive for action changes from emotion to ration. Although maintaining similarity to the childhood state, the structure does go through a remodeling that allows changes to encroach. Most parents support this stage positively by encouraging positive behavior, allowing healthy risk-taking, and staying connected. Sometimes, some negative alterations ingress leading to mental health issues. The young human begins to enter its final form.

A couple more years and the last bit of mental growth is sealed in at conclusion of young adulthood. With a robust support network, adults can handle almost any conflict whilst protecting the warmth of life inside. The purpose of that warm life becomes an overshadowing question. What is the reason for spending decades developing into adulthood? The question is as old as thought itself. Stoics will say to be free from suffering. Hedonists maximize pleasure. Nihilists argue life has no meaning. With millions of years to process, Deep Thought^[9] calculated 42. Numerous philosophers have tried to find a universal solution without success. As a lifetime is a mere speck on the cosmic timeline, life is meaningless: the earth continues to spin with or without human life.

Everyone is unique due to their genealogy, rearing, experiences, etc. Each person must give their own life meaning in their own unique way. Being social creatures, sharing one’s life with others is often a fundamental component. With the freshly baked bread, share a slice with friends. They eat, they like, they praise. Share some more. Each time the loaf shrinks, but in good company rejoice. Eventually the loaf is reduced to the last heel, then nothing. Some crumbs and memories are all that is left to remind of its presence.

Had the loaf been waiting to be consumed, had no one been offered a delicious slice, it would begin to grow stale. Hardening into a rock, it is inedible. Further disgrace invites colonies of spores to take hold. Marking their territory in fuzzy green patches. At first sight of the invaders, the loaf is destined to the compost. All is lost. Bread is quick to replace. Bake some more and perfect technique. Life isn’t as repeatable. Give life meaning, love each other, and bake some bread^[10].

Notes

1. ^ I recommend Fleischmann’s original. They were the first to produce active dry yeast in World War II. The yeast cells are partially dehydrated and can survive on the shelf for months without being refrigerated. The warm water rehydrates them from their dormant state.
2. ^ Depending on various factors, including humidity, more flour may need to be added to create the dough.
3. ^ The dough should clean the bowl, attaching itself to any leftover liquid or flour.
4. ^ Studies have found the optimal temperature to be between 24° C and 26° C.
5. ^ Or until golden brown. Total baking time ranges from 25-45 minutes.
6. ^ If the sound is muffled and dampened, bake for another five minutes.
7. ^ Usually this bond condition is dependent on the mortality of both parties as loss is a powerful emotion that is difficult to remove without removal of thought itself.
8. ^ Modern linkage points to British Philosopher John Locke, often learnt in secondary school. The ideas can be traced back to Aristotle, Stoic, Persian philosopher Avicenna, and Sigmund Freud.
9. ^ The supercomputer Deep Thought learns the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
10. ^ This essay is about bread but suitable goods to bake includes brownies, cake, cookies, croissants, custard, or just about anything. The provided recipe is for a lean dough rather than an enriched dough with high fat content. The higher fat leads to a denser dough with super soft interior and a gentler crust (think cinnamon rolls). Both are delicious and worth experimentation.