Hasta La Creative!

From Adbusters #114: Blueprint for a New World, Part 3: Corpo

One of the things that makes people feel completely helpless in our world is the idea that they can’t escape the established order of things.

Even the most fundamental parts of your life and your identity are prepackaged and sold back to you in glossy sterile plastic. Everything you eat comes from a factory far away and is sold to you for ease and comfort so you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself. Well, this “convenience” is actually a massive disservice to your consciousness. Everything you eat depends on a networks of corporations. Well, as you know, there is another way.

Having a garden of your own is the first step. When you look at your own garden you have an enormous sense of pride and satisfaction seeing that things you put into the Earth came back to you and provide fruit. It’s the magic of nature and existence, that all things are transforming into other things. But even with a garden there are a few things that seem to escape that growing process. And one of those things is bread. In Arabic, the word for bread also translates into “life.”

The first step to escape the simulation of reality is to learn how to make your own bread. That’s why I’ve created this handy guide—to show you how to make your own bread, and how to take one baby step out of the simulation.

I consider bread to be nearly esoteric in the lessons it can teach you. The ingredients you need for a basic loaf of bread are:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp yeast
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup water
• And the secret 5th ingredient:
• Patience

Time might just be an illusion, but patience is still something we need to learn how to cultivate. In our world of instant gratification and automatic updates, our ability to calm down and be patient might just become a thing of the past. You could make the best loaf of bread out there … so long as you are patient enough to allow it to do what comes naturally.

Now the instructions.

First you take your tap water and let it rise up to room temperature. This can take about half an hour. Then add the water to a mixing bowl and add the yeast. Leave the mixture of yeast and water for about five minutes, until there is a layer of foam on top of the water, meaning the yeast has become active. Did you check your phone, or did you check the water? Make note which method you used to measure the time. The next step is to add flour and salt. Salt is important because it makes the yeast fart out all those gasses that make the bread nice and fluffy. Now mix all ingredients in the bowl, I personally like to use a wooden spoon because it gives me a chance of see how the dough is mixing. I do this until the dough is smooth. I don’t know how long this takes. Once the dough is smooth it’s usually sticky enough to pull all the residue off the sides of the bowl. Then, let it sit for a few hours, until your ball of dough has doubled in size. You could read a book. You can do anything while you wait.

Once the dough is doubled, you begin to knead it. Get some flour on your hands and a clean surface and then keep folding the dough until it’s smooth and not longer sticky. Knead the dough into any shape you want. Do you want a baguette? A round loaf? Once you have the desired shape, you have to leave it again and wait as it rises once more.

If this waiting game is giving you anxiety, then you can observe what modern society has done to you. Your ancestors made bread every day. Now you buy it from the store. Once your bread has risen you bake it at 450 on a greased pan for about 20 minutes. I like to cut the top before it goes into the oven so it looks fancy, but you can do whatever you want with it.

Once it’s done, you should be sitting with a loaf of bread that you made all by yourself. This bread is evidence that you don’t need the system. And now that you have this delicious proof, you can keep asking yourself, what else can I make? Can I make my own flour? Can I harvest my own yeast cultures? There are no limits to freedom once you realize that you have the choice to agree to your bondage in our current paradigm. All you really need to break free is patience.

— Eric Radulovic, Indianapolis, IN.

• #114
• Corpo
• DIY

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