The Joy of Being Bad at Something
Baking bread is a relief from a work-obsessed world
I was elbow-deep in a batch of banana bread that accidentally contained enough flour to assemble an army of dessert loaves when I realized I hadn’t been this bad at anything in forever. And I loved it.
Breadmaking has become something of a trend. For The Cut, Edith Zimmerman wrote that baking bread makes her feel as if she is a “magician.” That’s the effect of a seemingly trivial hobby — something that doesn’t stand to make you smarter, fitter, more cultured, or better at work.
I hardly qualify as a bread-baking magician. The first time I used the breadmaker, the loaf fell apart when I yanked the kneading paddle out of the bottom with too much force, sending chunks of banana bread flying across the counter. Then there was the time I caught a whiff of something burning in the kitchen and realized my loaf of cinnamon bread was engorged, swelled up over the sides of the breadmaker. Plus, I once Googled, “Is buttermilk supposed to be chunky?”
It doesn’t matter. Rendering my kitchen a disaster zone in pursuit of bread, with flour places it shouldn’t be, feels meaningful because it isn’t supposed to be. The day before I used my breadmaker for the first time, I’d worked a 13-hour day, evidence of a slow creep toward a wholly…
