Baking Bread

Mark K September 4th, 2007

My friend John and I were talking about what kinds of activities put you in a meditative state that is most conducive to creativity. We both agreed that it would be something physical, but not too demanding in terms of effort or technical ability. It helps if it’s something that you’ve done many times so that you don’t really need to think about it and that it involves repetitive motion.

“Shaving,” John offered. “I’ve heard that shaving is the ideal activity for encouraging creative bursts.”

I thought about that for a moment. While I was thinking about it, I was engaged in the repetitive activity of stroking the 3-day old stubble on my chin, thinking about the beard that I’ve worn almost constantly for the past 30 years.

“Oh, so that’s my problem,” I said.

We got a good chuckle out of that one and both agreed that showering was also a great activity for creative inspiration - and something that I have done several times in the past three decades, I might add.

Then I started to tell John about my new job - I’ve been filling in as the morning bread baker at our restaurant for the past three weeks. When I tell people about learning this new skill they often have the same reaction - they say that working with dough and baking bread must be a very zen-like activity, that getting up early and working alone with your hands, kneading the dough must be very much like a form of meditation.

My first day on the job, I was trained by Gerhard, who had owned his own bakery for years and is now semi-retired. As we were kneading the dough, he tried to explain to me how you know when it’s the right consistency.

“There’s not really an English word that describes what you’re looking for,” he said. In German, the word is fingerspitzengefuhl - literally “fingertip feel.”

I guess that what he was telling me was that my mind might not comprehend when the dough is ready, but my fingertips would let me know.

Thus started my training in this fascinating combination of analytical chemistry and gut-level intuition.

I found that you had to measure everything precisely and set the mixer to knead the dough for an exact number of minutes. But five minutes into the mixing, you had to eyeball the mixture and throw several unscientific handfuls of flour into the bowl if it didn’t look or feel right.

The same could be said for the baking time. When the timer goes off, you need to look at the loaves and see if they look right, take them out and thump them for the correct tone and sneak a peek at the bottom to find out if the crust is darkened, but not burnt. Day after day, the bread comes out slightly differently and you get to use analysis and hunch to theorize what caused the variation.

So now that I’ve progressed from a novice baker-in-training to a slightly experienced baking assistant, what do I think about the therapeutic benefits of baking bread?

I like doing the work, and I think that it’s good for body and soul. Why? I think that it’s because for me bread baking requires a perfect balance between being comfortable and confident and being pushed out of that zone. Learning something new is always a challenge, but there’s a routine, a schedule, recipes and repetition that make it do-able. And then there’s the measurable results that you can view (and eat!) Feedback is almost immediate and there are plenty of complements when you get it right. But then there’s that something that’s hard to quantify - the art, the trial and error, the intuition, the - how can I explain it?

Fingerspitzengefuhl!

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