THE BREAD BAKING ANALOGY, PART 2
It should be no surprise to anyone who reads my blog posts that there is a definitive connection between culinary activity and writing. Both are creative in nature, are deeply personal to me, and relate quite strongly to one another.
In an earlier post, I described the process of baking bread as it related to writing. But there are other aspects which have relevance. Let me show you.
A while back, I decided to try making cheese. Most recipes were simple yet in order to make a good mozzarella, for example, you would need to add rennet. I’m quite certain I could buy it locally if not online but I didn’t want to go that far. I did make paneer and it was palatable but not what I was looking for.
So, I downsized my interest and found a way to make cream cheese. The basic recipe would yield something for toast or my homemade bagels and it could be modified to add herbs if I wanted to jazz it up. A very simple recipe that called for separating curds from whey in whole milk using an acid of some sort, white vinegar or lemon juice.
The recipe actually had the audacity to suggest discarding the whey. I figured there must be something I could do with whey liquid. After all, I put whey protein powder in our morning smoothies. Through diligent search, I found a recipe for a honey whey bread. For the most part, the whey is used in place of water when proofing the yeast.
Writers have a tendency to accumulate a lot of information while writing. Historical fiction writers perhaps even more so. After all the effort, it seems almost wasteful to discard it, simply hit the DELETE button on a file. That tireless effort resulted in a treasure trove of information that could be used at a later point. Perhaps something that didn’t fit into the Work In Progress could lead down another path, a different story, or, at the very least, the seed of something yet to be determined.
Many years ago, I tried my hand at making wheat bread. I had a couple of bread recipes that I made regularly. A good challah (which I learned how to braid much later). A rustic artisan bread. My wife’s late grandmother’s dill bread. It was time to expand.
I don’t recall exactly what went wrong but the result of that formative effort delivered a dense, thick, flavorless bread. If you toasted it and doused it with butter, it was palatable. I gave up the idea of making wheat bread.
Until I got an e-coupon for Bob’s Red Mill Wheat Flour at my local grocery store. I had bought several items from the brand and felt it to be of quality. I still didn’t have a viable recipe but the coupon was about to expire.
When I finally got around to making it after searching for what appeared to be a manageable recipe, I risked any possibility of success by adding in sunflower seeds to make a seeded wheat bread. Well, I’m not sure if it was the recipe or the flour or me getting better but this batch came out great. So much so that I made a second batch with sunflower, pumpkin, and chia seeds. A fully seeded wheat bread.
How often has a writer started a project and didn’t like where it was going? It is certainly easy to just stop and move on. Perhaps there was something about it that keeps coming back to you. Perhaps the storyline, the genre, or one of the characters. Maybe, just maybe, when you’re in between projects, you take another look.
I’ve got many like that from fifteen or twenty years ago. I can’t recall exactly why I stopped. Maybe if I review them, I’ll realize they are better left in the trash heap. Perhaps I’ve got fresh (yet older) eyes and could see something worthwhile.
Recipes are written by someone else but they are managed by you. Your writing is wholly personal from start to finish or until they are no longer viable. I routinely purge recipes that I printed up thinking they might be interesting if that interest has passed or my tastes change. With writings, I keep them around. It’s a reminder of where I’ve been. It’s a portent to where I am going.
