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It surprised me to learn that making artisan bread is all about patience. A pleasant surprise, luckily, given my patient nature.

There are a lot of things that essentially depend on patience. You need patience to sit calmly through a long or slow tv show so that you might enjoy the reward at the end. You need patience on long drives, that plus the ability to be content with your own thoughts for long periods of time.

You need patience to order from Amazon and always choose the slowest delivery option; the cheapest but also the least rewarding option. Patience helps to stay less stressed, to choose the slower option when getting places or arriving there early and being content to wait. I often wait months or years after a new movie or show or game comes out before I enjoy it; with enough patience, why not wait?

And, of course, a good amount of patience is indispensible for artisan bread.

It's interesting that it kind of feels like the most important ingredient that will differentialy any piece of bread it just how much time it takes. Not a lot of cooking is like that, most advanced dishes require some amount of skill or technique. It's not that bread making requires none of this, but once you have the basic technique down there's not much further that additional skills can take you. The real differentiator now is time, which is another way of saying patience.

So, once you've figured the very basic techniques of mixing the ingredients, folding the dough, and shaping the loaf, you might wonder where else to go from here. Unfortunately, the only skill that remains to grind is patience. If you're in a hurry, maybe you can make bread from start to finish in a single day. If you start the dough at 9:30 in the morning and give it a lot of yeast then it will be ready by dinner. If you're in a real hurry maybe you can start later and compensate in other ways, but that's sure to have an impact on the final loaf. There's no substitute for time.

To be clear, there's a little bit of work at the start and the end but the vast majority of the time involved is just waiting. There's nothing that needs to be done, nothing you can do while the bread ferments and proofs. All you can do is wait.

In my experience it feels like every stage of the process is slower than you'd expect. Even beyond the 5 hour minimum for fermentation and at least an hour for proofing. I can roast vegetables in my oven in 20 minutes, but proper bread needs more like 40. Then after that it needs to sit undisturbed for a while so the inside isn't gummy when you cut it open. At every stage you are asked to wait, but at every stage you are also rewarded for your patience.

More advanced recipes don't demand any extra skills, which is nice. All they need is more time. Do pretty much the exact same things as before, but over a few days instead of a few hours. When we get into the realm of sourdough, or levains, that can mean waiting weeks instead of days. It would be excruciating if not for the fact that every minute and every second you wait will be worth it in the end.

I've found that most bread recipes you find online aren't very honest about this fact. Many of them sell their recipe with catchy bylines like "make this QUICK AND EASY bread at home with NO KNEADING in only 3 HOURS". I don't doubt they probably have some tips and tricks to make the process go faster. In fact, I don't doubt that in general there are many alternatives to patience. Ways to get around having to wait, or ways to get equivalently good things that don't require so much time.

Maybe this is partly the fault of the internet. It installs an urge for quick gratification, which I'm sure are appropriately rewarded by the search engines. Maybe there's a page out there called "slow and easy bread. no tricks, just take your time and make delicious 24 hour bread". I'd love to see it, but I imagine it'd be hard to find. That's partly why I enjoy learning from books.

I think it's interesting how impatience and stress affects how far in advance you can schedule things. I guess it's fair to say patience is not the only factor, but a good amount of patience certainly helps when you're making plans. Not many people think far enough in advance to make preperations now for a meal they'll have in 2 or 3 days, much less 2 or 3 weeks. And when plans get inevitably delayed, it's quite telling whether someone rushes through whatever is next to get back on track, or if they are willing to keep delaying everything after.

It feels meditative to me to slow down and take the extra time to do something right. I don't always make that choice, but I do whenever I need to. I guess that's kind of the original idea behind meditation - mindfulness, being present, stopping to smell the roses.

There are a lot of vague plans I have in life; things I wish I could do or that I wish I'd done. It doesn't bother me too much though, because I'm patient about those things and I know I'm going to continue being patient. What does it matter if my goals are delayed by few months or years when I have my whole life ahead of me. I probably have at least 40 good years in front of me, and maybe 30 more bad ones; I'll take my time with things because there's no real rush.

I think that's a mindset that more people should consider adopting. I know it's helped me.