Concerning Bread and Illness

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It’s A Long Process

My favorite television show is “Forged in Fire”. It’s a reality competition show in which four bladesmiths enter a studio forge and are tasked with making knives (or other tools) in a timed series of challenges. The knives are then tested for sharpness and durability through dramatic tests, like getting whacked into a railroad spike and then used to slice through a ham. The final two contestants have five days to recreate a historical weapon at their own home forge. That weapon is also tested in extreme ways, including being shot at with a gun.

It’s undeniably satisfying viewing: I know of no other reality competition that offers such a distinct, and succinct, evaluation process, one that is immediately understandable by the viewer. The blade performs by resisting damage and showcasing sharpness. And when else do you get to see a fella slice an entire ram carcass in half with a scimitar?. 

In that way, “Forged in Fire” works differently than most other reality TV shows. In a 2013 piece for Esquire, the late food writer Josh Ozersky writes about watching Noma founder René Redzepi on a talk show, and the paradox of the celebrity chef. The food that Redzepi cooks is mostly inaccessible: His restaurant is in Copenhagen, his meals are very expensive, and reservations are booked up months or even years in advance. And yet, here was this man on American TV, famous for cooking, when most Americans will never taste any of his food. 

That same tension exists in reality cooking competitions like “Top Chef.” Contestants create elaborate and appealing-looking dishes, but that isn’t an indication of success. Most viewers at home will likely have a surprise moment when the dish they think looks or sounds the best gets panned by the judges for being under-seasoned. Even though it’s said we eat with our eyes first, flavor is the number-one consideration. The judges, then, exist entirely as interpreters for the audience. We only know how to feel about the contestants’ work from what they tell us. 

Even other visually led competition shows, like “Project Runway,” have similar issues with judging. A draped jacket might look stylish to a viewer, at least until Isaac Mizrahi rolls his eyes at how poorly balanced the garment is. As an audience member, we’re quick to learn that our own vision betrays us. The thing we thought we liked, well, maybe we didn’t like after all. 

In “Forged in Fire,” there are distinct markers of success, and visually, the viewer can evaluate them in the same way that the judges do. You might hear Amanda Freitag declare that the potatoes were undercooked on an episode of “Chopped,” but you have to take her word for it. If J. Neilson can bash a broadsword into a wooden shield 10 times without any glinting on the edge, both you and J. Neilson can clearly see the quality of the temper. 

The satisfaction in that process—taking raw materials, transforming them into something new, and then performing visual tests—is what drew me to bread-making. When I began, I was caught off-guard by the number of clear cues during the process: the overall rise of the starter/levain, the elasticity of the autolysing dough, the growth of bulk fermentation, the immediate surface tension during coil and folds, the skin formation during pre-shaping, and the final taut package of a fully shaped batard. All of these steps have distinct indicators that let you know how successful your bread is going to be, leading up to the final step: the bake, and the dramatic reveal of the oven spring. 

The visual nature of naturally leavened bread is so strong that—especially since the start of the pandemic—there’s an entire industry of breadfluencers leveraging their sourdough hobbies into full-time baking careers. It’s clear, too, that the most popular processes are the ones that create the most dramatic visuals, from lofty oven spring to stunning ears. 

It’s addicting. On days when I don’t have a dough working, I find myself struggling with my identity. Who am I if I’m not making bread? Every minute counts down to the final bake, when the success of 36 hours reveals itself in just 20 minutes in the oven. How big will the spring be? How open the crumb? Will the ear be photogenic? Will the shape be as even and consistent as I think it should be?

Never once do I ask myself if the bread will taste good. I know it will. It will taste amazing, every single time. I know the texture will be divine. I know the flavor will be deep and complex. I know that I will slather multiple slices with butter for breakfast every morning. But that’s not why I bake. 

No, It’s A Very Long Process

When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a week and a half ago, my new MS specialist was trying to explain the next steps. There would be more bloodwork, bargaining with my insurance company, and waiting on other test results before we decide how best to proceed with treatment. 

“Remember that bank commercial?” he asked me. “Where the guy says, ‘Wow, sounds like a long process,’ and the lady goes. ‘No … it’s a VERY long process?’” 

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disorder, one where the immune system attacks the soft tissue around different parts of the nervous system. In October 2019, I was hospitalized with optic neuritis, which was the result of my immune system targeting my optic nerve. I’m mostly blind in my right eye now. In January 2021, a spinal MRI found two active lesions on my cervical spine after a few weeks of a numb, tingling sensation that worked its way up from my feet to my midsection and lower back. MS is punctuated by flare-ups—episodes when the immune system goes haywire and starts to attack a different part of the body—and the symptoms can range from mostly mild to severe loss of balance and muscle control. Losing eyesight is pretty drastic, but staying physically capable throughout this flare-up has been reassuring. Once I start treatment, I’ll likely not see another flare-up for 2-to-5 years. 

I often think about how much patience I learned from bread-making. A dough process is mostly waiting, punctuated by moments of quick action: mixing, stretching, shaping, and baking. My future with MS is similar. I’ll likely mark time more by the years between flare-ups than by the symptoms themselves. 

It’s a scary feeling, not knowing what the future of my disease will be. I can still remember commercials showing people with severe MS symptoms unable to walk or lift a cup of coffee easily. But then again, I hear stories every day of people living mostly unaffected lives with MS. I may never have another flare-up again. Or I might require a walker by the age of 45. Seems unlikely, though: I hear treatments have gotten really good in the last 4-to-5 years.

It’s these moments when I am grateful for bread-making. As I write this, the tingling and numb sensation that started in my feet has mostly moved to my torso and fingers. Typing is slower than I’m used to, and my hands want to cramp up in a painful way. But even when my legs were at their weakest, I was still able to make bread multiple times. I baked loaves to give to friends. I baked loaves to turn into croutons. I baked loaves for great sandwich slices. No matter how physical and tangible bread-making is, the process never requires fine motor skills to reach successful results. Even though my hands hurt right now, I can still mix a dough, shape a loaf, and score it relatively easily. 

Success in bread is relative, too. Like “Forged in Fire,” there are a few key tests that bread has to perform: Does it taste good? Does it hold the shape it needs to? Neither of those tests requires the bread to look a certain way, just as the most successful knife on “Forged in Fire” needs to perform well rather than look pretty. 

Something new home bakers might not notice at first is the subtle difference between the Instagram breadfluencers and the bread bakeries that post to Instagram. While the breadfluencers are more likely to focus on which techniques create the most visually appealing bread, bakeries spend more time talking about how they develop flavor and consistency. It’s a subtle shift in perspective that I’ve been adopting in my own bread process. And it’s also one that’s changed how I view “Forged in Fire”: It may be easy to be drawn into the stunning visuals, but the true spectacle is the performance of the blade itself. Success is less visual but more tangible. 

Success managing MS is less defined. The goal will be to have zero new flare-ups for as long as possible, and then treat them efficiently when they do arrive. When I lost my eyesight, I had to rush to the hospital for five days of nonstop IV steroids, which left me feeling agitated, antsy, sweaty, and oily, and hungrier than my stomach had room for. Even after leaving the hospital, I felt so awful that all I could do was lay on my side and watch TV for 12 hours a day. I spent that time using my one good eye to watch episodes of “Chopped” back to back, an endless parade of food I’d never taste. 

Now that “Forged in Fire” is in my life, I know what I’ll spend my next steroid comedown watching. And I’ll also be counting the days until I feel normal enough to start making bread again. Or maybe my treatment will be effective enough that I never am hospitalised again. 

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.