Play, don't work: The human journey as told by several loaves of bread Desert Sage column Loaves of my mother’s dark-crusted whole wheat bread sit on racks on top of the refrigerator. I am 8 years old. I played no part in producing them, but I touched the dough during its second rise and furtively ate a pinch of it. In my twenties, I ask my mother for her bread recipe. She describes what she does, including the essential proportions, but there is no recipe. She just brings things together and helps it happen. “You follow recipes, you listen to advice, you go your own way,” begins one of my most cherished books. Ed Brown, author of “Tassajara Cooking,” continues in the introduction: “The results don’t have to be just right, measuring up to some imagined or ingrained taste. Our cooking doesn’t have to prove how wonderful or talented we are. Our original worth is not something which can be measured, increased or decreased. Just feed, satisfy, nourish. Enter each activity thoroughly, freshly, vitally. … Play, don’t work.”