Life and baking bread

By: Rita Valendez,
Contributor

Winning in life and baking bread are so alike. They need to follow specific procedures to make it right—SCALING INGREDIENTS is like having enough confidence, determination, and passion to achieve our goal; it’s like ensuring we get the same dough we want. 

After having enough courage and all the ingredients to pursue our goal, MIXING and/or KNEADING are the second and equally important steps to getting our perfect bread. Like kneading and mixing, people need pressing and experience to become refined. 

With all the experience and pressure in life, we won’t become successful if we get stuck in this process. Meditation, reflection, and pondering are like the FERMENTATION of all the ingredients we gather inside ourselves. During this stage, we need to increase our size, become the bigger person, and prepare for all the failures and frustrations that life may throw at us. 

When we think we have enough problems, similar things keep pouring in. PUNCHING and pushing happen to forge us into the kind of dough we are destined to become. 

Like all successful people, they put effort into each phase of their lives. Measuring our actions is essential to achieving our ideal lives and plans for the future. SCALING THE DOUGH and ROUNDING are bread-making techniques; these techniques are like projection and preparation for the life you want to live. 

BENCHING is another step. This is included in the procedure since bread needs setting—settings, positioning, and getting ready before the bread is baked. 

Although we have accomplished a lot, we are still a few steps away from the finish line. After benching, our bread needs MAKE-UP AND PANNING. Like people, although we are all ready to take action, we must harness everything we have prepared. 

PROOFING most commonly refers to the final rise of the dough. For me, it is the essential step before the ultimate leap and final step to the battleground—the Battleground or the BAKING OF THE DOUGH. 

And like the bread we eat, after finally achieving the success we define, we need COOLING from all the hustles and bustles of life before we taste the success we worked for so hard.