Failure and I go way back... I've failed so many times at so many things, I've had no choice but to call it "friend." I've learned to embrace failure like a family member; one that I get along with, but also one that I effectively ignore, for the most part. I'm okay with Failure, Failure's okay by me.
Like I said, we go way back.
So, this weekend, when I started working with dough and baking bread again -- something I had not done due to the success (sorry, Failure!) of The Real Drunk Housewives of the San Fernando Valley for the last eight months -- .I had to expect that my bread chops might be a little out of practice. And they were.
It's weird how something you make from water, flour, yeast, salt, and heat can have so many things go wrong. For bread to have flavor, the process can take two to four days. Fermentation is involved. Yeast, water and flour have to do their part. Fresh & Easy might bake cheap fresh bread daily, but your tastebuds have to work overtime. Not a great trade-off for a 98 cent loaf of bread. It's the fermented "sponge" made the day before that gives bread a particular taste. A little salt slows down the fermentation. Heat and water give the loaf its crust. Five or six cups of flour are there for the ride. It all works. As long as you manage the time and manage the temperature. And, to be certain, as long as you measure and manage your ingredients.
My first misstep in "How to make 2-day bread in four days," meant misreading and mis-measuring the amount of water to be used...it was supposed to be 1 1/3 cups of water, not 1 1/2 cups. The bread rose looking like a manta ray. Even that little bit of extra water meant it couldn't bear its own weight and kept flattening out. Fixed it a little bit by drying out the loaf with more flour. Put it in the oven -- two loaves, actually, I was being ambitious -- and found the two loaves too big for the baking stone, so one hung over the side and started burning almost immediately. Third misread was that I was supposed to put the stone on the lower middle rack of the oven, not the oven floor (which I use for pizza) and even the surviving loaf ended up with a burned bottom. We ate both loaves anyway because burned bread still has more flavor than Fresh & Easy bread.
Instead of quitting for the night, I immediately began the new sponge of water, flour, and yeast. Let it ferment for three hours and then put it in the refrigerator for overnight. Next day, took it out, started the second half of the recipe, properly measured out the water and put the baking stone at the proper level in the oven. Made just one loaf this time. Success. It came out gorgeous and we gave it as a gift (at nine o'clock on a Sunday night...hey, it's fresh bread!).
Baking bread always reminds me that failure isn't the same as defeat.
Failure only becomes defeat when you surrender, throw your hands up and walk away, never to return to that oven, or those mixing bowls, or that script, or that joke, or that song, that keyboard, that music program, that book, that essay, that story, that concept...
Can't do that. Well-made bread tastes too good.
Success is worth the failure.
