Day 10: Baking Bread

I've been baking bread on the weekends. Half a dozen loafs each Saturday, trying to practice and perfect this dietary staple. It's part of a greater dream that we're following, one that has yet to make it into these posts. Regardless, on Friday nights I skim our miles of cookbooks and settle on a recipe. The Bacon and Onion Fougasse turned out flavorful, after three attempts. The pepper and onion flower-pot breads were an instant success. The Farl took two weeks, but ended up tasty, for a British bread. We bring the loaves to our neighbors or friends at work, carrying them around in parchment paper, like little warm packages.
I've fallen in love with baking bread. It's true that I have a new 6 quart professional kitchen-aid stand-up mixer that does all the hard mixing and kneading. But I've fallen in love with baking bread because of the process. The rising process. I read that the longer the yeast is activated in the bread, causing it to rise, the more flavor the bread will have. Take the Fougasse; the first time I attempted this bread I used quick-rising yeast. The recipe called for 4 hours of rising time and I was looking to cut corners. And so I used quick-rising yeast, one that is balanced with chemicals to make it rise in half the time. Within an hour the bread was done rising and I was pumped. But it tasted like nothing. The texture and the colors were perfect, but the bread tasted like a day-old biscuit. The Fougasse is a beautiful bread and so I tried it again, this time using fresh yeast. It rose for 4 hours. It rose for two more after that. An entire day spent rising and in the end, the bread was filled with flavor. We tore off pieces and ate it for days. We didn't give any away. You see, the only difference between this Fougasse and the first, was the time that I allowed it to develop.
And isn't that the way we are as husbands and wives? I want Rich to be a quick-rising husband. I want the recipe for a perfect marriage and I want it in half the time. But I am learning a thing or two during these 100 days and one of them is that marriage is a lot like bread. It's in the time spent rising- the down time, the long hours, that the flavor of our lives is developed. We can rush our marriages and they may end up looking great with perfect texture. But if we want a love that is rich in flavor- a love worth tearing off in pieces, then we must wait and watch and let love grow in it's own time.