Nothing smells better than freshly-baked bread. Take it out of the oven, let it cool a little, and cut into it. A puff of steam comes out and fills your house with that amazing aroma.
I've been baking bread for nearly 10 years. I started with a technique called the French knead, or the aptly-named "slap and fold". You pick up the dough then slap it onto the counter. Then turn it, pick it up, and slap it down again. The process is noisy, exhausting, and you end up with tiny bits of dough flying around your kitchen. They stick to the walls and are hard to scrape off. The bread tastes good, but I'm not sure if it's worth it.
Fast-forward to last month. I've refined my process to near perfection. You just put the ingredients in a bowl, stir them for a minute, cover them, and leave them all for a full day. The bread comes together perfectly. There's no mess, it's dead simple, and it tastes amazing.
I think my bread journey is a metaphor for aging. The things I used to spend so much time and energy doing—finding the right clothes, the right music, worrying what people think—these things that took up my time have been refined. I think, with age comes efficiency.
