Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Phil 4:6-7



Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Slow Rise





From Brother Juniper's Bread Book:


"It is a principle, like a great cosmic law, that yields marvelous fruits when applied in conformity with other laws of baking and it is a principle that can, like all true principles, be transposed into the moral and ethical realms of politics, religion, work, and life in general."
"In breadmaking it works like this: You take flour, water, salt and yeast, mix them together in the proper proportions, and form the dough into a ball. You then put it out of the way and forget about it for about an hour and a half. What you do not do is rush it by warming it up; just let it grow at its own pace."
"Some slow-rise doughs take much longer than this, days even, but the point of the slow rise is that, when you mix the right things, you do not want to fool around with them too much. You want nature to work, character to develop. You do not want to rush the process." 
"One of the keys is having faith in the process."
 "Slow rise has taught me and is still teaching me a way to live, a way to be, and a way to see. It is a window into an understanding of things that go on around me, a way to make sense of the seemingly senseless scenarios we are exposed to throughout life."



The photo really has nothing to do with the text. Well, not directly, but then...


Adding this post to Ginny's Yarn Along. Details about booties found on my Ravelry page.



7 comments:

  1. Wonderful! Thank you. (and yes, booties and babies too)

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  2. I have about a half dozen Peter Reinhart books and did not know he was a religious! Now I must read this one, too. :-)

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    1. He is, or was, religious, but not Catholic. He was, at the time the first book was written, Eastern Orthodox Christian (as he called it). I don't know if he is religious now. He first started baking with a now very popular bakery called Brother Juniper's Cafe in San Francisco, hence the title of the book. Some of the text in this book is almost sacrilegious as he compares bread and baking to God and a religious experience. But I really bought the book because I liked the metaphor of "slow rise" and have always been drawn to baking bread because of it -- the process that is.

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  3. Thank you for this thoughtful excerpt. Just added this to my Amazon wish list :)

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  4. Beautiful words and knitting. =)

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I appreciate your comments -- sometimes I feel like I'm talking to myself!