The best part is when I get to dig my hands into that warm, soft dough. You can kind of get a sense, right then and there, of what kind of loaf it is going to be. There are lots of admonitions in a lot of instructions to be sure to knead the dough for at least ten minutes. I suppose kneading does get tiresome for some folks, or else it seems excessive to knead for ten minutes the first time around, but there is no other point at which I am so intimately involved with the bread. It seems like it would be a shame to rush it.
Maybe you are thinking that I have gone around the bend a bit when it comes to bread making. After all, I’m not really that good at it. Half the time I bake those kind of doorstops that are like a brick inside a quilted cover (or are, in fact, a brick inside a quilted cover) except that my brick is a gelatinous mass of cold, wet dough. Other times my loaves come out like an Edie Brickell song: pretty but flavorless. In either case, I have probably failed to be conscientious in including the proper ingredients, or I have tried to rush a process that naturally takes time.
So baking bread does wind up being like a relationship. There are things one cannot force, things which have to come in their own time. There are little surprises, like when the yeast begins to explode in the water. There are great moments of satisfaction, like the culmination of the first rise or the way fresh bread smell permeates the house. It’s not something that I can come back and catch up on later. I need to be with it right now.