“ Everyone starts from somewhere”
This morning, I was so adamant about making bread just because I forgot to buy regular white bread at the grocery store. At the same time, my mom was also running out of yeast since she often makes doughnuts. So, I utilized what we had and ended up making a rustic bread without any yeast. But the thing is, it’s going to be my first time making rustic bread and no yeast. My desperation led me hoping that it would magically work. I started gathering all I needed, flour, salt, water, baking powder, and sugar. Though I was skeptical, it’s worth trying, at least I thought.
My mom was still resting until she got down to the kitchen and saw me kneading in a small bowl. She started asking me what the ingredients were and saying things like, “ How come you make bread with no yeast?” “ That's the recipe from when they first invented bread!”, “ this kind of thing is what my great grandmother would eat”. She started nagging and showing me more tools to work with. I ended up switching to bigger bowls and she taught me kneading techniques. She was extremely skeptical but just let me see it through.
“ Who is writing recipes like this? Are you sure you’re not reading a recipe book from centuries ago”
After mixing everything, I got the dough and it turned out quite decent without knowing what would happen. It got approval from my mom when it comes to the visual. After waiting for about 30 minutes, the bread was ready. I showed my mom and then when we tried to cut it through, it was hard as concrete. My mom laughed so hard and she said, “ this is the kind of bread they ate in the past”, “ you can throw this around and play with it like a ball” and then she laughed harder saying that if I ever get robbed, I can throw the bread to the robber and they’ll faint. There were so many variations of it but we just laughed it off.
Then my mom started telling me her failure stories when she was in high school. She used to try so many recipes and failed. And my grandfather would cheer her up and said, “ let’s just go buy it”. Through those failures, she learned many tips, tricks and recipes to bake better cookies. She told me that she would cry but because I laughed, she laughed too and was happy to find that it was my way to deal with failure; instead of crying, I chose another way to deal with it. My grandma came in and started saying the same thing. She said that it is okay to make mistakes when you make something for the first time but learn from your lesson. Because everyone starts from somewhere!