My sixth loaf of bread came out of the oven looking almost exactly like my first one, which is not the trajectory I expected when I started this whole project back in the spring. It’s dense, a little pale on top where it should be golden, and slightly sunken in the middle in a way that no amount of reading about gluten development has managed to fix.
I decided to learn bread making mostly on a whim, after eating a slice at Wanda’s that she’d been given by someone else and enjoyed more than she let on, and I thought, I can do that. I have not, six loaves in, proven myself right about that.
What Keeps Going Wrong
The dough never quite rises the way the pictures in the recipe suggest it should. I’ve adjusted the water temperature, the amount of yeast, how long I let it sit, and I get some improvement each time, marginal, but the loaf never quite achieves the tall, airy structure I’m apparently supposed to be aiming for. I think my kitchen runs a little cold, honestly, and the dough just doesn’t have the warmth it wants.
I also, on my fourth attempt, forgot the salt entirely, which I didn’t realize until I was already eating a slice and thought something tasted strangely flat. I went back and checked the recipe against what I’d actually put in the bowl and confirmed it: no salt. An entire loaf, hours of proofing and baking, missing one of the most basic ingredients because I got distracted by a phone call halfway through mixing.
Why I Haven’t Given Up
By any reasonable measure, I should probably stop. Six loaves of mediocre bread is a lot of flour and a lot of time for a result that hasn’t meaningfully improved. But there’s something about the physical process of it that I’ve come to genuinely enjoy, independent of how the bread actually turns out. Kneading the dough, feeling it change under my hands from something rough and shaggy into something smooth, is oddly satisfying in a way that has nothing to do with the final loaf.
I also like the waiting. Bread makes you wait, hours sometimes, and in a life that doesn’t have a lot of forced pauses built into it anymore, I’ve found I don’t mind having something that makes me sit still and let time pass without trying to fill it with anything else.
What Wanda Thinks of My Progress
I brought Wanda a slice from my fifth loaf, hoping for some encouragement, and she ate it slowly, thoughtfully, and told me it was dense but had a good flavor, which I think was her way of being honest without being unkind about it. She said the loaf she’d had before, the one that inspired this whole project, came from a bakery, not a home kitchen, and that maybe I was comparing myself to a standard I was never going to hit without a professional oven and years of practice. That was oddly comforting, actually, hearing that the bar I’d set for myself might have been unfair from the start.
What I’ve Changed My Goal To
I’ve stopped trying to make bread that looks like the pictures. I’m just trying to make bread that’s a little better than the last loaf, in some small, specific way I can identify afterward. This time, more salt, obviously. Next time, maybe a slightly warmer spot for the dough to rise, near the stove instead of on the counter where the draft from the window gets to it.
The Sixth Loaf, Specifically
It was dense, like I said, but the crust came out better than any previous attempt, a real crackle to it when I cut into it, which felt like actual progress even if the crumb inside still isn’t where I want it. I ate two slices with butter, standing at the counter, and felt genuinely proud of a loaf of bread that, if I’m honest, most bakeries would probably decline to sell.
Loaf Seven Is Already Planned
I’ve got the flour measured out for another attempt this weekend. I don’t expect it to be dramatically different from the sixth, though I’m hoping the crust holds and maybe the middle rises just a little more than it has. I’ve made peace with the fact that I might be one of those people who is destined to make consistently mediocre bread for years, and for now, that’s turned out to be a perfectly fine thing to be.
What the Osei Kids Think of It
I gave a slice of the sixth loaf to one of the Osei kids over the fence, mostly because I had more bread than I could reasonably eat myself before it went stale. The verdict came back blunt and immediate, the way kid feedback usually does. It was fine, apparently, but not as good as the bread their family gets from the store, a comparison I wasn’t really in a position to argue with given the store bread in question is, by most standards, quite good.
I told them it was homemade, thinking that might earn some extra credit the way it sometimes does with adults who feel obligated to be encouraging about effort. It did not. They shrugged and said homemade doesn’t automatically mean better, which is honestly a more sophisticated take than I expected from someone that age, and one I’ve had to quietly agree with every time I’ve cut into a dense, slightly sunken loaf since. Effort and quality aren’t the same thing. I’m still working on closing that particular gap.