Indeed, part of the satisfaction that comes from making bread is precisely the irrationality of the whole endeavor. Making bread is an overt dismissal of the idea that one’s time should always be productively spent. It is also an affirmation of the strangely character-building properties of tending to a soft dough; of treating this colony of living organisms with the care they require to perform, rise, and ferment under the proper (75-80 degrees, draft-free, humid) conditions. Every bread-baking book that I’ve read gives detailed instructions for kneading dough, demanding that the novice baker first push the dough with the heel of one or both hands, then fold the dough over itself, then scrape the work surface, make a quarter-turn, and repeat until the dough is “elastic,” “smooth,” “shiny,” or any number of other vague descriptors. Each of these books also makes the more accurate claim that, despite the precision of its particular method, what really makes a good loaf is the experience of the baker; after a while, technique will be eclipsed by intuition, by “feeling” that the dough is ready to be proofed from some ingrained understanding of the stages of its life.     

      At this point in my bread-baking career I feel somewhat lacking in my intuition for doughs, especially whole-wheat doughs. I’ve experienced this knowingness once, though, when I made Julia Child’s French bread, all white and pristine in the basicness of its recipe. The dough was supposed to be soft and supple and the rhythm of kneading was supposed to have reached methodical precision, and in an imperceptible instant, after about 7 minutes or so, it was achieved. The dough was velvety but had integrity, bouncing slightly and pushing back against my probing hands. The seams of 5 minutes ago, indicative of mal-incorporated bits of flour, had completely disappeared and the surface of the starchy orb was smooth, like dewy baby skin. It had warmed slightly from the caloric release of my vigorous efforts and a sensual impulse made it difficult to stop kneading, to untangle my hands from the pleasures of that perfect, ready texture. This was what I had been after; what had eluded me in past doughs because I hadn’t had the patience to keep kneading, to remain faithful in the ability of this simple motion to keep transforming my dough into what would become a lofty, open-crumbed loaf.    

      There is a meditative calm evoked by the process of kneading, and an earthy satisfaction that comes with the muscle fatigue of beating mud-thick starters and pre-ferments. That the most sophisticated tools required for the process are a beaten-up wooden spoon, a big plastic jug, and a dampened towel invites a rustic comfort not found when using faux-riental mandolines, electric ice cream makers, and other-worldly silicone cupcake pans. Baking bread reminds me of what used to be involved in food preparation and consumption, which is reassuring in an age when entire “dinners” emerge complete after three minutes in the microwave. One of the reasons for which I am drawn to food preparation in general is this sense of taking back and making personal what has largely been relegated to the mechanized convenience of hyper-efficient production. But aside from the political, environmental, health, and pride-preserving motives involved in cooking and baking, it is the therapeutic physicality that often nudges me into the kitchen. It is the childish attachment to minuscule successes that inspires me to measure, mix, and knead.

      To say that the satisfactions of baking bread are purely physical, though, would be a gross oversight of the thing that truly attracts us to doing things the slow, irrational, and less efficient way. For all of the pleasure I take in the various elements of baking bread, the holistic appeal of the endeavor stems from its implicit declaration of my personal victory over the insipid micro-partitioning of my time. As the general speed of human interaction increases, seemingly exponentially, I become increasingly fascinated with those things that simply cannot be accelerated, regardless of what new technologies are unearthed. My yeast will not ferment faster no matter how fast my internet connection is, and so I heed its slow and steady whim. For a few hours, I am a slave to the leisurely pace at which it decides to double the volume of my dough.

      In reality though, at the same time during which I am subjected to my yeast, my worldly responsibilities are subjected to my desire to bake bread. It is not a chore for the modern baker, but a luxury to spend hours waiting, kneading, turning, folding, slashing, and baking. The act of baking is also the act of reclaiming the right to use time as we wish. When I bake I languish in this found glut of time. Time becomes something that passes, quietly, in the background, instead of something that pushes me, incessantly and rudely, from behind. Bread baking requires the kind of nuanced friendship with time that is missing from other daily endeavors; we all curse the minutes for not passing quickly enough at the gym or during class, or for passing too quickly on the way to the airport or in the frenetic dawn of yesterday’s tomorrow. When I bake bread, though, I love time for the way it structures my little edible project, for instructing me when to check my bubbly dough or pull my precious loaf from the oven.

    It would be irresponsible to say that torn chunks of warm bread are not a true prize of baking one’s own bread; it would be an act of overstating my philosophical approach to the things I like to do to assign ultimate importance to the control I gain, over time and over my own life, by doing things like baking bread. While it’s easy to analyze the psychological components of things I do ex-ante, while sitting and writing, my mentality during the act of kneading itself is fixed on my actual product, not on abstract personal fulfillment. Bread-baking is only an act of self-expression after the fact, post-first slice, when the physicality and functionality of it all is a memory and not the present occupation. Still though, I surely don’t bake bread out of the sheer impulse for something warm and delicious. The motivation to bake bread cannot be separated from the knowledge of the time and effort it entails, nor from my appreciation of the idea, as opposed to just the reality, of baking. Indeed, the immediate satisfactions of baking and of eating often seem like excuses I submit to my own sensibilities, perhaps to justify the more subtle satisfaction of dedicating bits of my life to the life of my bread.