Breadventure

Joy Bilbey

Breadventure
By Joy Bilbey

I decide to make bread because I have reached that stage of adulthood where I look at flour and think, Yes. I control my destiny now.

The recipe is titled “Easy Bread,” which is how recipes lie. Step one is “Activate the yeast.” Already suspicious. Why does it need motivation? Why is yeast that’s been in the back of my fridge for five years inactive? Rather, how the heck is it alive?

I sprinkle the yeast into warm water per the instructions. Not hot. Not cold. Warm. The recipe is very clear about this, in the same way an action movie is clear about not cutting the red wire. I stare at the bowl for five minutes wringing my hands, whispering, “Please don’t die.”

Nothing happens.

I lean in. I squint. I tap the bowl encouragingly. A few foamy bubbles appear, and I feel an overwhelming sense of delight.

Next comes the flour. I add some. Then some more. Then even more, because the dough looks too wet, which is a thing I now know can ruin your life. The dough transforms from sticky to haunted. It slaps around in the mixing bowl sounding unstable.

Kneading is described as “therapeutic.” This is another lie. Kneading is just smooshing dough for ten minutes while questioning every decision that led you here until it springs back when stretched instead of tearing. Looking for “smooth and elastic,” I settle for spunky.

Now the recipe says, “Let rise until doubled in size.”

DOUBLED.

Because that’s easy to discern when something is spherical.

I take a picture of it, then I take another with my hand nearby for perspective. My hand looks weird in the photo so I put a spoon next to the mound of dough and snap one more. I cover the bowl with a towel and wait. And wait. And wait. I check on it every ten minutes like an anxious parent.

“Are you rising?”

“Are you trying your best?”

“Do you need more time or emotional support?”

After an hour, it has grown approximately 3%. I google “can dough sense fear.”

Eventually it rises enough that I decide it is ready to become bread. I punch it down, because apparently we’re supposed to remove the air that the somehow-living yeast exists to produce, shape it into a loaf, and put it in the oven.

The kitchen fills with the smell of fresh bread, which immediately makes me feel superior to everyone who has ever lived. I stand in front of the oven with my arms crossed, nodding like a judge on a cooking show. Yes. That is bread.

When it comes out, the loaf is uneven, oddly shaped, and still spunky. I slice into it, ignoring most of the last step in the recipe, “Let cool and slice.” The inside is… bread-adjacent. Dense, but determined.

I eat a piece anyway.

It is warm. It is homemade. It tastes faintly of comfort and pride.

It is way better with butter.

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Joy Bilbey grew up in suburban Detroit in a family of musicians, many of whom are drummers (she is not). She studied natural sciences, mathematics, and educational philosophy in undergrad and now enjoys her husband, four grown children, pets, books, live music, and her fairly new writing degree in and around her home in Grand Ledge, Michigan.