Heavens, no. Not here, please. Go on, clear off.
To suggest that life without longueurs is a shallow thing is not to decry certain zip-quick elements to the daily grind. However, amongst all this bump and hustle must be found times in the day to set it all, appreciatively, in context. A walk to work, or to a friend’s house, or just around your local area, bears benefits beyond your daily health kick. It sets your world out in more human parameters, often piquing interest in easily-ignored treats.
If this behaviour could be dismissed, it would be to argue that to react against the possibilities afforded by modern invention, we are being wilfully anachronistic. According to that argument, baking your own bread must be one of the most deliciously anachronistic pastimes of them all. The whole process involves entering the world of one’s grandparents: ingredient choice is limited and rarely stocked; once found, the flour comes in string-bound paper sacks, with little by way of lurid lettering to denote the producer; buying fresh yeast is an episode in itself, involving going into a bakery and asking for a lump of the stuff they use… it’s nowhere to be found amongst the actual display items. It just comes wrapped in greasy, blue-and-white paper, and its cost is entirely down to the mood of the member of bakery staff serving you. No two-for-one offers here.
So, you have your dry, dull-hued and dusty ingredients. Next you add – the frivolity! – some water and a bit of salt, and away you go. Well, that suggests action, dynamism. What it actually involves is some manhandling of the sticky dough (which can actually feel slightly strangulating to begin with), then leaving the mass to settle. After that, well, it’s down to the precision with which you measured out your ingredients, and time – lots of time – as to how well your loaf rises and proves.
Phwoarrr look at that seam.
But this is where the weird magic of it all happens. Without you doing anything much, this unworkable, psychotically gummy substance turns itself into a smooth, faintly tangy-smelling blob. Which then begins to grow. Its surface distends and becomes ever sturdier, rather like a stomach during pregnancy. Except at the end of it all, you get something tasty to eat, rather than something loud and excretory.
So, onwards through the rising hours, arriving finally at the task to shape the dough – like playing with edible putty, essentially. After this, you leave your little creature to prove just the right amount – again, not an issue of precision, more just a question of tentative prodding and a bit of trial and error – and then the beast is good to go, banged into an oven.
A small while later – ah, there we are. A homely, unpretentious, warm, nice-smelling reminder that life is the best. Given a few minutes to cool, then out with the bread knife, off with one of the ends, on with a dap of butter, and swallow. Yu-u-u-ums.
I’ve gone so far as to make a leaven – a natural yeast-like substance that deserves an article in itself. It takes a small amount of effort, but requires a week before you can use it. It’s great: a globular, acrid baby/monster living in a Kilner jar on the shelf. Making leaven loaves takes even longer than usual loves, but they taste unfathomably good – proper, geet posh sourdough things, which hold their heat, moisture and structure when toasted. Each slice – and I mean each slice – thrills you to your core as to just how you managed to create such a beautiful object. And I daren’t even talk about the excitement engendered by the phrase ‘crumb structure’ (It’s all about the holes, dude).
Anyway, the point is that the process of baking is so extremely satisfying and tangible. This is made doubly so if you work in the great internet aether, where work is abstracted into numbers and letters and it all zips past so darn quick.
A splendid thing to try. Yeah. There’s your ‘take-home’ message. Nice one.