When I first started baking, I made all kinds of complicated doughs: natural sourdough starter doughs; brioche; flatbreads with three different kinds of flour; french bread with four different proofing stages and sponges so delicate they evaporated with a sneeze.
Some of them turned out great...others not so great.
But, one day when I tried my hand at the simplest dough of all--pizza dough--I got stuck.
Pizza dough is merely flour, yeast, water, sugar, salt and a little oil.
You just put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix; an hour later a nice, large pouffy bowl of risen dough should be the result.
...not for me.
I tried the same recipe for two weeks straight and all I could get was a lump of the same dough I started with.
It refused to rise.
I became obsessed. I went over that recipe with a fine-toothed comb. I tried different combinations at different times. I thought the water was too warm or too cold; I thought I kneaded it too much or too little; I tried bringing my bowl of dough over to my neighbor's house to rise, because I thought the temperature or humidity in my house was the culprit.
I must have thrown away a hundred pounds of dough.
Finally, I just gave up. I walked away from the recipe for a couple of days because I would cry every time I read it.
Six simple ingredients, and I couldn't handle it. My ego was severely bruised.
But I learned something from this...humility was the most important ingredient of all.
You see in baking--the truth is absolute.
You can play with flavors, but when it comes to measurements...there is no room for mistakes.
I took another look at the recipe a few days later and saw something different.
The recipe called for 4 tsp. of salt...that means teaspoons.
Now, salt is vital in giving giving the dough texture and support. Without it the dough would be a flavorless mass of nothing. But too much salt will turn dough into a hardened lump which would bake into a teeth-breaking loaf.
Too much salt prevents the dough from rising like it should.
...I had been using 4 tablespoons of salt.
For some reason, my eyes saw this: tblsp.
But, the real measurement was this: tsp.
And for two weeks I went insane trying to fix something a little dose of humility would have caught right away.
I knew the rules of baking; I knew if you got a measurement wrong it wouldn't turn out.
But, I was convinced I had gotten all the measurements correct...I kept reading the stupid thing day after day.
I just refused to see the truth.
The truth is irrefutable. We all arrive at the truth through different means, but it takes the same dose of humility to recognize it.
This is a link to an article by a columnist for the Chronicle Hearld: Andrew W. Smith.
Think of it as a recipe for President Obama's first 100 days:
From the article:
"•Obama’s first two major bills alone, the "stimulus" and "omnibus," cost nearly twice as much as was spent on Iraq over six years – $1.2 trillion vs. $650 billion.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise of "a net spending cut," his first annual deficit – not counting bailouts – being three times the worst deficit under President George W. Bush.
•Obama’s objective in his first G20 summit – commitments to spend our way to prosperity with massive stimulus boondoggles across the G20 – was rejected out of hand.
•Obama’s objective in his first NATO summit – commitments to combat troops for Afghanistan from "our European allies," which Obama and his party imagined were ready and willing to fight if only someone "enlightened" like him were running things – was predictably refused, with some more European non-combat contingents offered as a token.
•Obama’s Defence Department announced cuts of $1.4 billion to missile defence, the day after North Korea test-fired its long-range, multi-stage ballistic missile.
•Obama’s "tax cuts for 95 per cent" turned out to mean $13 a week from June to December, to be clawed back to $8 a week in January – as compared with President Bush’s 2008 tax rebates of $600 to $1,200 plus $300 per child, which were notably scoffed at during the election campaign by Michelle Obama.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise to reform earmarks, signing the omnibus bill which contained 8,816 of them.
•Obama took more money from AIG than any other politician in 2008 – over $100,000 – and signed into law the provision guaranteeing the AIG bonuses which later had him in front of the cameras "shaking with outrage" and siccing the pitchfork crowd on law-abiding citizens who had fulfilled their end of a contract and had their payment upheld by Obama’s own legislation. "
Now look carefully at that recipe and ask: if America were the dough, do you think it would rise?
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