Ten loaves of bread

I tried to make five loaves of tomato-basil sourdough. Instead I made ten. The recipe that I quintupled was for two loaves. I ran out of good flour and went to the okay flour. Other than that, I followed the recipe. Except I didn’t have paprika, so used cayenne instead. Oh and some experimental precut fridge proofing. Other than that, though, to a tee. They all turned out fine. I’ve been getting pretty good at bread. It’s simple: follow the recipe. Like really follow it. With a scale and everything. Exact measurements. Put aside the notion that you are talented and have an innate skill for bread, because you don’t, not at first. Humble yourself and submit to the instructions of the recipe-maker. And — this part’s important — read the whole thing first, so you don’t end up with more dough than your oven can handle and ten loaves of too-spicy bread.

When the final loaves were cooling on the stove, Seth and I went to play basketball. We’ve been getting pretty good at it. Or so we thought. And we tricked some strangers into thinking so too, because they invited us to play three-on-three. They needed a sixth. Seth and I swapped in. That’s how we learned that we’re still terrible. We had transported into a new universe with creatures that were more basketball than human. Their hands, feet, torsos were all an extension of the ball at play. They were each in five places at once. They were flying through the air and…