Mise En Place

The last week was so full for me and my wife: I started a new job slinging pizzas at a restaurant down the street, we moved into a beautiful (and cozy) 600 square foot apartment with our 80 pound mutt, we unpacked, we celebrated our third wedding anniversary, we enjoyed the courtyard view outside our new front door (full of peacocks, big oaks, morning life-and-death dramas between resident squirrels and hunters from the marauding feral cat clan), we walked by the lake and met new neighbors, I caught my first fish in Lake Ellen, we laughed a lot, and thanked God a lot for so many prayers answered so quickly, beautifully, extravagantly. 

And I wrote precious little. 

I spent a goodly amount of time in the cracks of our days and nights thinking about this Bread Book Project, and what next steps might look like, and I worried and wondered if I was ever going to share the first post to this blog with friends and family, and I daily considered my dreamed of life as a writer around our work with The Artist's Way. Each morning I put the needs of the day highly, and the needs of time in contemplation and working at the keyboard lowly. And a string of days like that can create a mighty groundswell of doubt and abasement and low-level shame.

If you are at all engaging with your own creativity, you must know the kind of thing I'm talking about here. Over the years I find it particularly strong just before and just after starting a major project (or even a small one, at times). And it usually comes raring back about 90% of the way through a project, as the finish line seems nearly mine for the taking. 

This morning I had to make a decision: take one of my full days off this week and go with my wife on a short trip to visit old friends in Orlando... or write. Or at least give myself the space to read, reflect and write. 

And here I am, camped out on my brother and sister's shady, screened-in back porch: the quintessential Florida Room, looking for my words, and thinking again about how good it is to miss those we love, how much it can make love deepen and grow. 

I went back this morning to revisit some of the early inspiration for this project. One of those things is a 15-minute TED talk from a guy named Peter Reinhart on the 12 stages of making bread. I loved (and still love) the mixture of his description of the chemical processes and literal transformations that happen "from wheat to eat" and the beginning glimpses into the metaphorical meaning and potency of the mystery of making bread. 

Peter is no Malcolm Gladwell as a speaker (another of my favorite TED talks is Malcolm on Spaghetti Sauce), but I think his plain language and evident wonder at the thing he's had his hands and head in this long is so compelling. He's written several books along his journey as an instructor at Johnson and Wales, and I've added a couple of them to my new Amazon Bread Reading List. I would be glad to have your suggestions on other books that I should be reading as I refine the scope and real heart of this work. I'm particularly interested in writers that have written at the intersection of the practical means of making bread and the metaphorical and / or spiritual experience of making (and sharing) bread.

My favorite part of Reinhart's talk when I watched it this morning comes about 6:00 minutes in, where he talks briefly about Stage 9 of making bread: Proofing. Proofing is where the baker lets the dough that has been mixed, shaped, rested and panned rise. And proofing, he says, is where we "prove that the dough is alive." It's growing. All the prep work and conditions are good and have been blessed and the thing is becoming something else under its own power. 

I wish I was at the Proofing stage of this project already. In some small sense, I am. I'm trying to do the work (right here) that makes life undeniable. But in another sense I'm still firmly in Stage 1: "Mise En Place" or 'everything in place.' Get organized. Have an ordered place to work. Collect what you will need. Prepare. 

Having actually done this last Thursday when I cleared our new kitchen to make our first meal in our new place, a meal to celebrate our anniversary, I'm grateful for the special joy of being in this stage, even as I hold the anxiousness to begin actually making the words and the photos and videos in tension with that joy. If the end result is half as good as what I made for my wife and I that night, I will be so delighted, and I think you will be, too. 

Starter

My name is Michael, and I want to learn how to make bread. 

I want to meet bread makers: humans with their hands in the dough of their families and cultures for many years who would be gracious enough to show me how (and why) they do what they do. 

I am a storyteller, and I want to share what I see and hear – and especially what I smell and taste and learn – with you. A humble, warm-from-the-oven offering we can all make sandwiches with.

I am a poet, and I want to observe, participate, distill and forge: to be delighted and undone and terrified at beauty. To be overcome with wonder and urging you to all of this yourself. 

I am a photographer and videographer, and I want to partner with other visual artists to help me share this exploration. 

I am a Christian following Jesus, which means, among other things, looking and listening for Jesus. Learning over the years to know his voice. To recognize this man, this God, who says he is the bread of our lives, in the midst of the mundane and the extraordinary days that are the gifts of our lives. To see, with surprise, Jesus, whose body we break and remember and have in our teeth each week in one of the most profound and beautiful mysteries of my life. 

If Jesus is alive, if the Christian faith is true and trustworthy, then I expect to find him at the tables of those that know him and those that don't: in the bread that is the staple in the kitchens of everyone, everywhere. In the Cuban loaves and French baguettes. In the black Russian rounds and the blessed focaccia. In the challah and the tortillas. The naan and the injera. In the breads I don't even know the names of yet.

For several years the idea of a book about learning how to make bread has been bubbling and fermenting and rising in me. And my early experiments with people and flour and water and yeast and salt have only made me more sure I want, I somehow need, to make this book with friends and people who may one day be friends. 

Last week I finally crossed a significant threshold: beginning to write the dream down. Using my words to begin outlining the vision, the hopes, an outline for how to make the thing come into being. 

This blog, this entry, is just another small step in that direction. One part journal of the journey, one part tangible reinforcement and advance against resistance, one part declaration of intent: a tiny recipe of a work long in process, here I take the starter in dusted, grateful hands, and finally begin to make the dough. 

I welcome you, whoever you are, into this story, whatever it will be. I may not know you, but this is for you. We may not end up in any place I expect to wend by word and wondering, but may we find our bread for today: something good in our bellies, good for our souls, and enough to share.