This morning I told a reporter that the best part of being an unschooler, a life-long learner, is that you gain confidence in your ability to learn. This afternoon I read How Children Learn by John Holt and thought about the way children can start out cautious, imitating adults and older children, and gradually moving on to putting sentances or puzzles together on their own. This evening I printed out my third challah recipe and decided how I was going to change it, and re-realized that yes, I am living an unschooling life.

I have never liked to cook. It involves too much waiting around. While I waited for the pan to get hot or the water to boil I'd go get a book to read, or check my email, and almost invariably something would burn. I never wanted to experiment with spices or ingrediants, I just wanted to eat, and the quicker the better.

I started cooking when I moved out. I live with three starving artists/students, so saving money is a big thing. I decided my contribution would be to make bread. My dad had made bread when I was very young and let my brother and I "help", so I could just barely remember how to knead and what good bread dough feels like. I found a very basic recipe (flour, water, yeast, salt, oil and honey) and made a couple loaves. They turned out beautiful and delicious and were eaten almost before I could blink, and I fell in love.

Then I ran into trouble. I kept forgetting to check to see if we had enough of the right ingredients before starting to make the bread. I made half-wheat-half-white flour bread, half-wheat-half-cornmeal bread, wheat-white-cornmeal bread, bread with too much and too little yeast, many different kinds of oil, bread with molasses and honey and sugar, and once, very memorably, bread without salt. (Don't try it.[1]) I always worried, but somehow it always turned out perfectly edible. At least, every batch was always gone in less than a week.

I started to gain confidence. I started to get a feel for how much I could fiddle with the ingredients, and what would happen when I did. For instance, salt inhibits yeasts fermenting and rising, so if you leave it out the dough ferments more. Noticably more. Then I made my biggest leap; I started wondering what would happen if I put molasses in, or powdered milk, or butter.

Wondering is the key. Curiosity is the key. The ability to do hands-on experimentation is the key. But most of all, (for me at least) confidence is the key. I'm not a perfectionist by any means, but if I don't think I can do something well, I won't try to do it well. In this case, I gained that confidence by trying something over and over again, making 'mistakes', and then being able to go, "Hmmmm... I wonder..."

At this moment, I'm talking to an old friend (and an unschooler for many years) who currently runs a small bakery out of his home. He's given me two book recommendations in the last two minutes, but most of our conversation is sharing what's fun to experiment with. He recently made wonderful baguettes by forgetting some dough and leaving it in his fridge for a week.

I blame it all on unschooling, on a particular mindset I call 'unschooling' which extends beyond the years one is 'supposed' to be in school. I am confident in my ability to make 'mistakes' into good bread.

[1] I later learned that salt basically hinders the yeast's growth. A lot of recipes recommend leaving out the salt for the first rise to give the yeast a good head start. If you leave it out entirely, though, the bread ferments too much and it really doesn't taste good. Hurrah for kitchen chemistry!