Real bread, the kind the supermarkets have dubbed "artisan", cannot be made quickly. The texture, the flavor, the sink-your-teeth-into-it-ness of good bread is a result of time and tension. There's no rushing the process of letting dough rise, and the best way to get a good strong bread that will slice and hold its shape is by subjecting the dough to stress - stretching, kneading, punching down, pulling, pushing, altogether making the dough go where it would not go on its own. You know when it's been kneaded enough when you can stretch it out so thin that you can see through it but it doesn't tear.
Nor did my daughter develop her muscular legs and stamina for cross country running overnight. It's taken weeks of training, weeks of subjecting herself to stress, hills, heat, obstacles.
So why do we try so hard to avoid stress, stretching? Why do we insist on a life that is easy, comfortable, free from the obstacles that would strengthen us, fit us for higher and better things?
