I Knead You
A Simple Recipe for Better Mental Health
I hate cooking. I go to great lengths to avoid cooking. How shameful, you say, in this day and age, for a man to not cook, but hey, at least I don’t smoke or do drugs. That’s got to count for something?
Anyway, I love baking.
Say what? That’s right: I hate cooking, I love baking. Maybe because cooking recipes taught by mothers and wives use guesstimation, not measurements. No weighed out ingredients, no fixed order of mixing them, no optimized cooking time or temperatures… throws me off completely. But that’s beside the point.
When I bake, and specifically bread, be it earlier in the morning than I usually wake up on weekends, or tired after a hard day’s work, I am full of energy.
Apparently, I’ve a bounce in my step and a smile on my face when I bake.
There is something immensely satisfying about baking that on the worst day I find the strength to knead the dough and the patience to wait as the yeast magically transforms the plebeian flour into princely bread. If that sounds like I make fabulous bread, heck no.
This is one activity where the process is just as satisfying as the finished product. There is a great sense of accomplishment in eating even subpar bread baked by the sweat of my brow. Not that I would consider my bread subpar, how rude!
Disclaimer: sweat is not an ingredient of bread.
But what follows after eating the bread — other than the digestive process — is happiness. And that, to me, is the main purpose of baking bread.
The secret ingredient in bread is not the love you pour into it. It is the stress in your body that melts away as you knead and fold the dough into that soft compliance, the eager touch, the reluctant separation, the trustful relaxation. Like a lover’s gentle embrace, but don’t tell my wife that. How soothing, calming, meditative, spiritual even. And a good reason not to spend on that KitchenAid.
That said, I’m already mostly a happy person. My quest in life is no longer finding happiness but keeping it. And baking bread certainly makes me happy.
Will this work for you like it works for me? I don’t know, but there’s an easy way to find out: try it.
Mindfully knead the dough. Imagine all your stress pouring out into it. Let the yeast send you its healing love. Ok, cancel that last, it sounds cheesy. Remember to smell the dough. Enjoy the process, and feel boundless happiness rise within you faster than any dough ever could. Let me know if you found the experience enjoyable.
Note: cheese is good, cheesiness is not.
It’s that simple: the next time you feel stressed out, quite literally get a bun in the oven.
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