February 22, 2016

Substance & Beauty: Finding the Balance

In recent weeks I’ve been baking bread in my free time. I’ve tried out French bread and some wheat sandwich bread and rolls. These recipes are from Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, and require a lot of time and patience and sometimes the process takes a few days. I find the practice relaxing, even meditative, a fitting activity for Lent.

Last weekend I tried Sicilian bread, which is supposed to be shaped kind of like an “S.” An important part of preparing the dough is making sure you don’t handle it too much and degas it, or let all the air bubbles out. Shaping dough into an “S” without degassing it is much harder than I expected. I made the bread over three days, and I ended up with something that looked like two flattened circles rather than the loaves shown in the photo. Oh well. It tasted pretty good.

I’ve only recently begun to learn about bread and to practice making it, but I’ve already learned it takes a lot of patience and it’s a lot more enjoyable if I relax. As Reinhart says in his book, homemade bread is always a hit. So far, it’s all tasted good even if the loaves aren’t exactly beautiful.

We in the church spend much of our time making things that are beautiful—liturgies and vestments, music and sermons—especially those of us at large churches with lots of resources. Growing up in a church with a very small staff and a volunteer choir and organist, all of that was secondary to Eucharist and the simple act of coming together on Sunday mornings. Even when our choir was out of tune I often loved them because they were clearly trying so hard. Breaking bread together in the Eucharist was more important.

Of course, there’s a balance. Good music is attractive and a careful, well-planned liturgy is an important part of worship. It is occasionally helpful to ask ourselves, however, if we are worried too much about the shape of our loaves rather than how they taste. Do we get too caught up in appearing professional and polished that we lose sight of the actual substance of what we are making? 

If I keep practicing, I expect that my loaves will look more professional over time. In the meantime, I’m doing my best to follow the advice of the experts and trust that if I get the ingredients together and stay patient, the end product will still be pretty tasty and no matter what, I’ll get to break bread with my family and friends. 

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