Eating Art

It takes a lot of work to make food. Weel, I mean to take raw ingredients and turn them into a dish; not so much to heat up a hot pocket!

Cooking can be so rewarding to the chef and the people being served. Not only is the end result usually tasty, but it is a reflection of the cooks hardwork and love. I have always appreciated home cooked meals as a kid. My mom is Sicilian and has blessed my brothers and I with exposure to some pretty damn good home cooked Italian meals. A lot of that cooking carried forward with me into my own growing family and I enjoy cooking thinks like "Suga Rosa" or ragu or chicken marsala. But even with all this I still catch myself overlooking what it means to cook and create food from many ingredients.It is an artform that also wears the hat of its own tradecraft.

In an attempt to relive a childhood memory of mine, I decided that I would try to make my own sourdough bread from scratch. I'm talking just water, flour, and countless hours of feeding and caring for the starter and dough. I ended up making a couple batches that turned out really well. I was surprised with myself, and I continued to make 2 loaves every week or week and a half. The process of learning was daunting. When you eat a piece of bread or an artisan sandwhich, the bread probably never crosses your mind as a product itself. It's just another ingredient in your sandwhich, or a free appetizer before your meal at your favorite restaurant. But the art behind making bread is insanely complex.

It seemed simple at first; add water and flour and just let it sit around. I used a recipe online for the starter and for the bread (more like instructions seeing as the only other ingredient is salt and even that is optional..) so it went pretty smoothly. I waited all the right amounts of times between phases, I turned the dough, I folded it, proofed it, and finally baked it; and it turned out great! I thought to myself, man that was a lot of work...but it wasn't that difficult. Well, that was the case for my first 4 loaves or so. Then things got kind of difficult.

In the process of looking at bread making as a task and a follow-the-instructions kind of ordeal, I lost sight of what it truly is; an art form and trade. My starter (which I truthfully neglected by not feeding as often as I should have) became more and more renegade like and less promising. I went through 2 batches of bread (which I might remind you take a few days of work and hours of attentiveness) that turned out bad and almost decided on quitting. It was then that I read more info and pointers online. While looking for help I noticed that the people that were writing lengthy blogs and articles on sourdough bread were extremely passionate and treated bread almost like it was gold. Some of the people that I read from were so in tune with making bread that there "instructions" were almost hard to interperet as not being sarcastic. "Add some flour and let it sit for a couple hours, check it and if it looks right you're ready to go." ?? Hardly instructions in my opinion. I thought it was laughable. But it made me think a lot about what I was doing. I was using scales and timers and focusing so much on the science and precision of it all. It was a stark difference.

I have noticed this before while watching cooking shows such as "Chopped" as well. The chefs on that show add ingredients and taste things with a sense of direction that almost seems to be imbedded in their minds. That is the art form of cooking in the works. The passion behind it. The artist and their easel at work. It wasn't until after I realized that that I was able to make bread again. I had to stray from the instructions and "feel it out" so to speak, in order to get things to where they needed to be for good bread. I ended up getting rid of my starter after neglecting it for too long in the fridge but I the lesson hasn't left me; cooking is an artform that should be appreciated beyond taste. Bread is just one example of that!

-Bo