Saturday, August 16, 2008

the tao of bread making

I suppose you are wondering what the tao is .. one would imagine it must be the Tao.. well it might just be. the tao of physics may well have been inspirational in this arb picking.
What it speaks of is the duality of life existence, science religion, evolution the universe and damn near everything.
I doubt bread making is nearly that complicated, but it is still party to the duality of the universe and life.
Bread making or in my case the religion of bread making not that it is a religion or that it isnt, but that i have subsequently devoted myself to the teachings of the great dough master or bread prophets of old. But what facinates me is the complexity and completeness of something so simple. Such simple ingredeants give rise to such an array of of different products. The simple flour water salt and yeast combine to give rise to such a complex, beautifull, rough, simple and unendingly complex array of of products.
I suppose it is simple enough to say add water and yeast a little sugar and activate, or in the case of the more traditional, take flour water and let it stand. Then the yeast of the Gods, or is the bread making the product of the religeon or is the bread making the religeon or is the product the product of its existance, this is difficult to say?
To diverge ever so slightly we then wait, and tme it takes, how long we cannot say, and without to much ado I sound like somthing out of the Cat and the Hat b y doctor Zeuss. That i must say is not what I wish to say yeat am saying, this duallity thing in life really gives me the creeps, or is the .. whatever ...
We take the yeastly activate then add the flour and kneed, there is a need to kneed, we need to kneed. The bread it must be ned, or is that kned or is it kneeded, I cannot say, but all i can say is that this is what we must do, with the aid of the hands i kneed the dough till it feels right, what is right what is wrong? Dont let it stick to your finger i plead when you kneed.. OMG i am so corny at this stage andsounding more and more like my man the Zeuss. But there are cases where corn works well, but not in my case I must admit, I have failed to tempt the corn to bind and grow with the yeast and flour I must say i have failed. The bread i then kneed and kneed and yet it is not actually bread it is just an amourphous blob of dough. That it is, i place some oil i let it sit , i place my needy dough, or isthat kneedy or kneeded dough, the chees it rolls from my toungue i miust say. I then go on and place the resting dough in a plce of quiet, i let it rise .. not from the dead I say? But to life it grows, yt inside it is life and death, the death of the wheat the growth of the yeast the sun and the rain within the flour fromout the wheat it came. I wonder here on a very different tangent how we as humans began or learnt or discovered bread? how did we find this out? There must be more than the history of the church behind the history of bread, the bread it weaves its web through out the ages.
It then rises life the phoenix out of te fire, it rizes and rizes and we beat it down 3 times? i wonder of this significance, i cannot say why but I do.
We then wrestle it into the form we want it, it this not in the same way we create images of gods and beings and begin to praise them. Only to wait again for it to rize and then to send it into the fires of hell to swell and develop a hard skin outside, structure within and tase throughout. the wheat the sun the rain the yeast the salt all combine to create a structure that from within its humble combines and resonates throughout society in more ways than one, from mere food to religeon of another kind, to the happiness and joy of comunion with friends at a meal to the comunion of man and another God the cementing of he two halves of a day together by the samwich of lunch the toast of breakfast the bread and the wine during theday, the night the sabbath and all. this I must admit is my ode to the Toa of Bread, admit I must it can be asumed to be filled with cheeze, both my words and the bread, but this it is the start the end the continium of life, the continium of life the sun the rain the chlorophyl, the leaves the drought the sand the wind the sun the starts the growth of the sead, the hapopiness of the germination, the harvest of life from soil and sun and plant, the grind of life the wheat it turns , the flour it binds ourlives from begin to end. But alas I msut end only to return and torment again this absurd and silly Blob I must depart my firends and contiue my day.

No comments: