One of the truly great bakers of this day and age is a man up in Sonoma by the name of Brother Juniper. He makes an absolutely incredible loaf called Struan, which is a Scottish Harvest bread. But what I appreciate even more is how he links making bread as a metaphor for how we deal with our lives. Do we start with simple pure ingredients and let nature take it's course, or do we add a lot of other stuff and try to rush the process?

One of the keys that I have learned from both Brother Juniper and Bernard Clayton is that the key to great bread with character, substance and density (and isn't that what we want to be?) are long, slow rises where the simple elements of flour, salt, yeast and water are allowed to work their magic. Just when the bread has risen for the first time and seems like it should be ready, you punch it down so that it will develop more. Longer rises are much better than shorter and in a cooler rather than warmer environment. Certainly a warmer environment will cause the dough to rise faster but the loaf that you produce will have huge air holes and little substance. So, long, slow, cool rises.

In terms of kneading, I like to think of it as making love to the dough. (If you haven't read my treatise on food, you should. Then you'll understand that last comment.) For those of you who don't know how to knead dough, it's really quite simple. You spread a layer of flour down on a clean flat surface (that is easily cleanable afterwards) and 'turn' your dough out onto it. Turning is simply a term that means pouring the dough out of the bowl. Actually it shouldn't pour. If it does, you've got to much water in the mix. It's more like you're pulling it out of the bowl.

Once you've got it on the floured surface, sprinkle more flour onto the top of the dough and then push down on the dough, flattening it. Then take the farther end and fold it back towards you onto the closer half. Congratulations! You've just done one knead. Now keep doing it for between 20 to 50 times. You can also fold the bottom half up towards the top half, but it is always a push-pull motion that really constitutes kneading.

One of the things that always amazes me whenever I make bread is just the sense of the miraculous that happens. You takes all these inert elements, combine them and suddenly they come to life. When you're kneading the dough you can feel it coming to life. It resists and gives way and responds to you almost as much as you are responding to it. You stop kneading when the dough has taken on a smooth sheen on the outside.

Baking bread is all about patience and letting nature take it's course. After you have baked it, it is essential not to cut into it right away. For the first thirty minutes or so after you take it out of the oven it is still cooking. The cell structure inside the loaf, protected by that chewy crust is still developing and to cut into the loaf too early is to lose that development. And what have you worked and waited for, but that character and taste. And finally there is the joy of eating something made by your own hands and feeding others with your love and care. There is no other feeling in the world like that. As I said in my essay on food, I think that that is why so many people are starving even though they eat three meals a day-there is no care in the food they eat. How much care goes into a MacDonald's Quarterpounder or a Burger King Whopper. Most of those people who are working ther don't even want to be there. That food not only has empty calories, but empty spiritual content.