Learning to Bake Bread Taught Me about Writing
By: Gwenna Laithland
Tags: Writer, Writers Life, Writing, Baking, Food

The last of the breadmakers in my family have passed away. The final member of the bakers’ generation, my grandmother-in-law, actually died two years ago. But the last bastion of her bread-baking legacy only just joined her.

My well-intentioned aunt-in-law forgot about her mom’s 20-something-year-old bread starter. It was left to spoil in the back of the fridge. The starter thrown out, my husband’s aunt announced that she would not be embarking on any more breadmaking.

“It’s too much work, I’m not very good at it, and I’m too old to figure it out now. Mama started when I was a baby. I’m not interested in starting when my babies have babies,” came the report. “I guess we’ll have to buy the bag of rolls like everyone else now.” With the holidays fast approaching, there shall be no golden loaf of homemade bread on the table for the first year in anyone’s collective memory.

I’m not much of a baker. I can make a mean duck, and I could probably follow Julia Child’s meanest recipe with some success, but when it comes to baking, I’m a hard pass. Even holiday cookies come out of a tub or a tube. But the weight of a fading family legacy, an ancient tradition, and a personal growth opportunity pushed me into the kitchen today, elbow-deep in flour and burping fungi.

Today, I’m attempting my first loaves.

As I was working, my efforts as a writer swirled around in my head with bread recipes and kneading techniques. Naturally, I was going to write an article about it. I write an article about everything. But the more I kneaded and pondered, the more I was struck by the similarities between these most ancient of works — writing and baking bread.

It Begins with Something Sweet

Everyone always gives yeast all the credit for making bread. Yes, they are the workhorse of breadmaking. Yeast makes the dough rise, air bubbles forming in the mass. Steam cooks the bread from inside those little pockets. If it’s done right, the inside is pillowy and soft, the outside gloriously crisp and firm. But that yeast wouldn’t do a darn thing were it not for just a little bit of sugar. The yeast eats the sugar, gets gassy, and burps. A lot. Hence, air bubbles. Bread begins with something sweet.

Writing begins with something sweet as well; often with a dream. I’ve never known a writer who started from a different place. Sometimes it was a literal dream from the edges of sleep that inspired the first story or poem. Elsewise, it was a desire to be or do more with their words. But it was always some version of a dream.

For me, it was walking into a library and seeing what felt like miles of bookshelves. I asked the librarian where all these books came from. She was a sweet, older lady with puffy, bluish hair and lace around her collar. The librarian smiled and said, “Well they came from people like you — people who liked reading and books and libraries so much they decided to add their own story.”

I was maybe six at that encounter, but I’ve never forgotten the librarian’s words. Her explanation is my something sweet. They were my first inkling of wanting to be a writer. I dreamed of adding my own story to that library. While I am a writer now, I’m still working on that book. But believe you me, when I get my first one published, the very first place I’ll send a copy is the Midwest City Library in Oklahoma.

Coping with an Unrecognizable Mess

Technically speaking, I’ve made bread before. A gifted bread machine from my first wedding was turned on once or twice in a half-hearted effort to appear domestic. I dumped the ingredients in as instructed, flipped a switch, and walked away.

I’m going old school this time. For one, I no longer own a bread machine. Second, this being an opportunity for growth, I wanted to experience the hard work of it before leaning into modern conveniences.

Following the instructions I found on Google, I bloomed the yeast and started adding the flour, cup by cup to the liquid mixture of yeast, salt, and sugar. It didn’t take long until my fingers were so coated in sticky goo I was experiencing severe doubt. With less than half my allotted portion of flour left, I felt there was no way this was ever going to come together. It didn’t look like bread. Even a little bit.

First drafts are just that, first — not finished.

The emotions of worry and doubt were identical to what I feel looking over my first drafts. The files are sticky, only semi-coherent ideas that sound nothing like the story in my head. I typed the words, but they don’t feel right yet. They look incomplete.

That’s because they aren’t supposed to look done. First drafts are just that, first — not finished. Just as each loaf of bread goes through several stages of unrecognizable goo balls, each draft starts as one thing and ends as something else.

You can’t look at the middle of the process, decide it isn’t working, and give up. Of course, it’s not bread yet. Naturally, it isn’t a good book yet. There’s a lot more work to do. There’s a lot of poking, prodding, staring helplessly, letting it rest, and starting it all again. Bread and writing take time and work to go from raw idea/ingredients to glistening, tasty finished product.

There Are No Shortcuts

Breadmaking is not a short process. There’s more time doing nothing than something, I’ve realized. Well, at least for this simple yeast loaf I’m trying to get right. A flurry of activity is followed by an hour or so of waiting around for nature and science to do their thing. Another little burst and then another wait for more science.

Preparedness is critical in uncomplicating the process.

There are no shortcuts, no hacks, no time-saving methods to employ while making bread. You do the work, and then you do the wait. Rinse, wipe, and repeat. You can’t really reduce the proof time, and bread will take as long as it needs to bake. It doesn’t care how hungry or anxious you are for the results of your labors.

Writing is no different. There are no shortcuts. You have to put in the time slogging through a first draft or dreaded rewrite. You have to buckle down and edit your work, chapter for chapter, line for line.

Now there are a handful of things you can do to better prepare for the breadmaking or the writing. Preparedness is critical in uncomplicating the process. Gather the ingredients and keep the tools handy. Prewrite and research before your story begins. You can prime the environment, via seasoning for the baking and preparing your mind and body for the writing. This isn’t so much a hack or shortcut as it is good practice.

Failure is Expected

I’m starting from absolute zero in breadmaking. I don’t even have a family recipe from which to work. The bakers’ generations of my family didn’t bother to write down any of theirs. They just knew them. They could feel the appropriate weight of the flour, they could tell when the bread was done by smell and sound.

Lacking any sort of guide or precedent, I had no idea how this was going to turn out. Comparing what I shoved in the oven to the picture shown next to the cheery food blogger’s recipe, I was not expecting a baking trophy. I followed the instructions and measured carefully. I set timers and then some more timers, just to be sure I didn’t overproof or underbake.

Being honest, I’m looking forward to flubbing this one up. I want things to go wrong because I want the challenge of figuring out how to make them go right. I yearn for the day I can say, “Yeah, I can bake a loaf of bread!” with confidence and surety. Because that means I’ve failed, learned, and improved.

My loaves came out looking, well, rough. They aren’t pretty by any means. The texture is a little dense, but the flavor is excellent. At this exact moment, I have no idea what to do to fix the errors. But I’m looking forward to figuring it out.

As a writer, I struggle a bit more with that wanting of failure and learning loop. I loathe the natural ebb and flow of rejection. It is a natural, needed part of the craft, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach. Every rejected article burns, even when I get great feedback as to why it was turned down. It stings even when I’m outright told, “I love your piece, but the timing is wrong for us.” The defensive part of my writer’s soul wants to take every rejection as a personal affront.

So, in light of my bread experiments, I’ll be submitting this particular article to places that have rejected me more than accepted, with good reason every time. And I look forward to being told no, should that be necessary.* Because it means I can learn from it.

(*Note from the author: If you’re an editor reading this as a submission, feel free to let me learn from rejection from some other source if you think this is a good fit for your publication. I solemnly swear to take my lessons from the next rejection.)