The Power of Less

Yesterday, as a birthday surprise, Scott and Scott took me to a bread baking class. The chef who taught us spent two years studying in Italy and has a passion for sharing her knowledge. The class we attended yesterday was on basic bread making. We made a traditional "lean" dough – the only ingredients being flour, yeast, water and salt – and then learned how to form these elementary ingredients into baguettes.

Chef Linda told us the story of beginning her baking training in culinary school. She arrived with the other students and each was told to measure out enough flour, yeast, salt and water and mound the ingredients on the table in front of them. Each student measured enough makings for 66 baguettes per person. They were taught the basics for hand kneading, rising and shaping the loaves and were then set to work. Five hours later, each student's 66 loaves were removed from the oven and the crumb, or interior of the bread, was inspected. All the loaves were found to be wanting and turned into breadcrumbs.

Each day when they arrived, the task began again with every student producing 66 loaves for inspection. For weeks, the loaves were deemed inferior for even the lowly students to eat and they were turned into crumbs. Her arms began to develop muscles she didn't know she had as she hand kneaded so many loaves of bread. Finally, she began to be able to form the loaves without looking. Her technique for kneading and shaping became second nature and her loaves became consistent and nearly perfect.

At the end of the class, as we stood around the baker's bench and tore off hunks of hot, crusty bread to sample we were amazed at how incredibly good such uncomplicated ingredients could taste. Simple flour, water, yeast and salt had become this.


Since having Ali's nephew at our house so much in the last month and a half, I've been thinking about how complicated and, in many ways, how unnatural life has become. Maybe I'm just becoming more aware of how we are constantly being enticed to buy some "gadget" to solve some "problem" we really weren't aware we even had. I can come up with a whole list of useless "gadgets" that are cluttering my life and I'm sure you can too.

As Ali and I struggle to help her nephew mature we find ourselves moving away from the noisy and hyped, "must-have" solutions of the moment towards the quiet and simple resolutions that make sense to us. We turn off the TV when he's there. We sit down and eat dinner at the table like a family. We talk to each other instead of feeding our addictions to internet, cell phone and media. We ask each other questions and wait for an answer instead of barging full-steam ahead without listening. We look each other in the eyes and communicate. We go play at the Y to exercise our bodies and spirits instead of complaining about how we wish the kid-ling would go to bed earlier and wondering why we aren't sleeping well. There's a long way to go, but maybe we're on the right track.

Maybe what's right for us, and for kid-ling, is a little bit less hype and a lot more of the basics? There is a certain power that comes in owning that and making it happen.

So what does this have to do with bread?

The most basic ingredients have been used for thousands of years to make something absolutely perfect. It takes effort and practice. 

But so do a lot of things.