Respecting imprecision: Baking and kayaking

, 3 min, 438 words

Tags: kayak-adventures

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to bake bread with a novice baker, and I was surprised by how much it taught me about kayaking. In particular, it showed me how respecting imprecision can demonstrate mastery rather than uncertainty.

Baking bread

My general approach to baking bread is this:

  1. Mix the dough. This involved some amount of yeast, water, flour, salt, and optional bonus ingredients.
  2. Knead the dough. Until it feels right.
  3. Let the dough rise. Until it's risen.
  4. Punch and maybe let it rise again. Depending on how much time/patience you have.
  5. Bake the bread. For a while, until it's done.

As you can see, this "recipe" contains a good deal of imprecision. Respecting imprecision is something I've become more comfortable with as I've grown as a baker. At some point, you've seen enough bread (and failed attempts at bread) that you just know when something is working or not.

But as a beginner, my co-baker ended up asking a lot of questions. Things like:

  • Wait, how much flour did you just add?
  • Do you substitute milk for water or add it in separately?
  • How long do you let it rise?
  • How long should it be in the oven? What temperature?

I answered each of these questions with "it depends" or "it doesn't matter much," to the dismay of my fellow baker. It turns out that respecting imprecision takes practice and experience!

Kayaking in ice

And that brings me to some questions I have asked over the last few weeks about kayaking in ice. Out in Aialik Bay, we're often paddling through ice, and I've had a lot of questions about how that works and what to look out for. Things like

  • How thick is too thick to paddle through?
  • How much should I worry about getting stuck if the wind is doing x and the tide is doing y?
  • When is it thick enough that I should lead in single-file?
  • How close can I afford to go to a piece of ice of size x?

Over time, my mentors have started to express some frustration at my desire for precise answers. Their answers are always "it depends." But until trying to teach someone how to make bread, I didn't understand their frustration. What else could you possibly use to make decisions out in the ice?

And the answer is that with experience and practice comes an intuitive understanding of how the ice works. Just like with experience I found myself respecting imprecision in baking, my teachers expect me to start respecting imprecision in paddling through ice as well.