This past weekend I went to a sourdough bread baking class. As you know, since the beginning of the year I’ve been making bread pretty regularly, at least once a week. But bread making is a complex art and science, heavy on the practical insight and skill you develop by actually doing it over a long period of time. As a result there were specific pieces of my bread-making game that I felt could be improved by asking a couple questions of a master.

So I found this class taught by the head baker of La Colombe in Philly, John McGrath.

The 2-hour class was great, but I’ll be frank with you, I could have taught it. In the three months I’ve been baking I’ve done a deep dive, as I always do with new interests. I’ve hoovered up just about all the basics you need to know to get started making sourdough. In fact, there were probably some tips for the home baker that I’ve picked up or discovered that he has long since forgotten as a professional.

And yet, I got exactly what I wanted out of the class and I know it’s going to have an enormous impact on my baking. Here’s why:

Baking sourdough bread is about a 24-hour process, maybe 12 if you really push everything. How can you accomplish this in 2 hours then? John had smartly broken up the process into the distinct steps, and then taken some of the steps ahead of time so that we could do all the steps, albeit in a shorter amount of time and out of order. So we had dough that the bakery had prepared all the way up to the point of pre-shaping and shaping it into a loaf, which we did and we also made dough from scratch using the exact same ingredients as the former.

The net effect of this was that I was able to bring home two loaves of bread to bake, that were *almost* identical but with a couple steps in the process happening differently.

If you’re following me here, this ends up being a pretty great way to isolate which steps of the process are contributing certain effects.

I took both loaves home and baked them. The one John’s team made ahead of time and I pre-shaped and shaped was the best, almost a carbon copy of the one we baked in class that they did 100% of. So I know my pre-shaping and shaping is good.

The one that I made from scratch was way better than my usual, but not as good as the other one.

From this I can deduce that the differences are either the ingredients, the mixing, or the folding during the bulk fermentation. As it happens my ingredients are already almost identical to theirs, so I’ve reasoned that my hand mixing isn’t contributing to as much gluten development.

I could have spent another year trying to figure this all out, and in a two hour class I was able to isolate exactly what I need to work on. Plus, I was able to ask a few targeted, specific questions about the things I knew were the weakest links right now.

You, dear reader, may not care about bread baking, but I would bet you do care about improving a skill, your health, your fitness, or anything for that matter.

The hands-on practical experience and isolation of actual application is something you simply can’t get as a “transfer of knowledge” from reading a book or an article. It has to be lived and experienced.

And I think most people undervalue that kind of information living in a time when knowledge is not only no longer at a premium, there’s actually entirely too much of it.

It’s why the programs I create focus heavily on self-experimentation and gathering your own data, and it’s why my articles aren’t long “fact”-laden treatises on what the empirically best way to shear a sheep is.

I’m much more interested in impressing upon you the need to do your own practical experimentation, and giving you the tools and mental models for doing so.

Biofeedback, in your training for example, is the best such way I’ve found for doing so with strength and fitness. It does no good to know that “this” is the best way to do a pull-up, if “that” is the best (or only) way that works for you.

So my question is, how can you crack open the practice of the skill you’re trying to improve? Take a class? Hire a coach? Find a mentor?

I hardly ever look at Facebook anymore. I know that is especially trendy and topical this week, but it’s true. And I don’t say that to brag or lord some sort of perceived superiority over others who do use it. It’s just that a couple years ago I realized I was habitually clicking that link and mindlessly scrolling through the feed. I installed a news feed blocker, and ever since then even when I open the site, I’m met with a mostly blank page, so I go on to do something else. It lost its allure.

Anyway, I preface with that because I was killing time waiting for a flight and I was scrolling through my Facebook feed on my phone when I came across this post & thread.

In the, an extremely popular and well respected nutrition expert lays out his case for why he believes, based on the “weight of evidence”, that BCAA’s are totally useless and a waste of money. He’s certainly one of the flag bearers of the “evidence-based” nutrition team, and has contributed a tremendous amount to separating the wheat from the chaff in the fitness world. There’s real value in using the best method we know how to understand the world, the scientific method, to figure out how things work. But, the problem comes when you treat science like a religion.

Here’s the relevant part of the thread (I’ve obscured the names because the point here is not a call-out, but rather to point out the fallacy that occurs over and over again):

You have someone, two people actually, who have by all accounts done the ultimate scientific experiment. They have, over a long timeline and under multiple conditions, experimented with the experimental variable and found that for them there are specific benefits available only under that experimental condition.

And the response by the High Priest is to tell them to buy a magic crystal pendant instead?

This is shameful.

It’s not science. And it certainly isn’t being evidence based. This person is telling you that the most relevant evidence for them, their own data that they’ve gathered under the conditions most relevant to them have led them to a certain conclusion, and the response is to tell them a magic crystal would work better?

This is how the High Priests of Gurudom maintain their power and status as the arbiters of what is right and true, cloaked under a thin veil of scientism.

The reason I’m highlighting all of this for you, dear reader, is because I already know you’re smarter than this and I want you to have the confidence and surety to run your own experiments and to make your own discoveries.

I feel like I’ve written about this ad nauseam​ but I’m going to have to keep writing about it because everywhere I look there is more and more trust placed in the myopic uber-rationalism of science.

Science is, in a sort of iconically metaphorical way, a microscope. It’s absolutely wonderful for looking very, very closely at something and seeing how the individual parts work and move. A scientist takes the microscope of science and looks closely and carefully and sees gears turning and levers moving, there’s even a tiny pendulum swinging! They conclude they’re looking at a mechanical watch. But then they take the microscope away, look at the entire system, and realize they’ve been studying a Rube Goldberg machine that powers a drinking bird.

On the other hand, you there, standing on the outside simply using all of your available powers of observation, deduction, and reasoning already knew it was a drinking bird.

If you’re going to be doing any amount of cooking, and you should, you’re going to need a sharp knife. A sharp knife really is safer (because you’re using less effort and not risking slipping), not to mention it makes the process of chopping, cutting, and slicing so much easier that it actually becomes enjoyable.

But if you’re like most people you never give two thoughts to your knives. You probably used your last set up until they were totally trash, and then got nice new ones as a wedding or birthday gift and have trashed those, too.

Let’s take a very brief detour to talk about what constitutes a good knife. As I see it there are three types of cooking knives: total junk, nice stuff that doesn’t cost a fortune, and high end craftsman-made pieces of custom steel. I’m a big fan of the middle category. The fact is, I just don’t want to have to expend daily energy and time to make sure I’m not ruining a knife that is a work of art by leaving it wet, or not wiping it down constantly. That rules out high carbon steel Japanese and artisan-made pieces. Although, listen, I’m not going to be mad about it if someone gifts me a Miyabi damascus gyuto. Anyway. Junk is junk so obviously that’s out. But for around $50-100 you can get a very nice stainless steel Henckel, Wusthof, Victornox, or Messermeister. These knives will hold a good edge, feel good in the hand, and will last a lifetime with absolute miminal care.

Nonetheless, even a great knife won’t hold its edge forever without sharpening.

There are three ways to sharpen your knives. I’ll give you the two easiest ways briefly, and then the badass way. The easiest is to just take it to a kitchen shop, hardware store, or professional sharpener. Most places are just going to run it through a machine that does a fine job, results in a sharp enough knife, but grinds off, relatively, a lot of the blade every time. This is fine for most people. The easy at-home option is to use a sharpener, like this http://amzn.to/2FYAmGs or this http://amzn.to/2tmFtO8. Again, this is fine for most people.

But, as usual there’s value in the way that takes more time and skill.

Stone sharpening has a few serious advantages over automatic sharpeners, in that in addition to taking less metal off the blade with each sharpening, manual stone sharpening allows you to maintain the exact edge angle that the knife maker ground into the knife in the first place. Edge angles vary based on the type of knife, and the designer’s preference or intent. It’s a shame to just grind that off with your electric sharpener.

When sharpening with a stone you need a medium to carry away the swarf (abrasive and tiny metal particles). Oil and water are the two main options, but I prefer water for the simple reason that there’s less cleanup, I don’t have to use a petroleum product, and I’m not putting mineral oil on my cooking utensils. As I see it there really aren’t any advantages to oil, and there are downsides.

Having settled on water stone sharpening, you’ll need a set of stones. This set, which was gifted to me by a good friend, is a great mix of progressive grits. The 220 stone is only really needed if your blade is badly damaged and chipped, so you might use that the first time but probably won’t need it every time. The 1000 grit is your main workhorse for sharpening, but the 3000 and 8000 will take it from sharp to hair-shaving, mirror finish sharp.

As I mentioned, water acts as a lubricant and carries away swarf when sharpening with water stones. You’ll want to soak the stones in water for a few minutes, and then occasionally add a few drops as you sharpen and push water off the stone.

Sharpening knives by hand requires skill and feel. The difficult part is matching up the (intended) angle of the blade with the angle you actually hold the plate at on the stone. When you don’t have a practiced hand at best you grind the knife at a slightly different angle, and at worst you vary your angle with each stroke making it less effective and less sharp than it could be if you held a consistent angle. That being said, you’re very unlikely to ruin the knife so don’t hesitate to make mistakes and be less than perfect as you learn.

Starting with the coarsest grit (lowest number) you’ll want to do about a dozen strokes per side of the blade, alternating strokes, making sure that you hold a consistent angle and evenly draw the entire blade across the surface of the stone. Opinions vary as to whether or not you should push the blade along the stone towards the edge, or draw it backwards away from the edge. Personally I have ended up in the towards the edge camp for reasons I don’t think are necessarily valid or important. Do what you feel. The only downside to this is that you can gouge your stone if you’re not careful when you get up into the higher grits and your blade is very sharp. Being careful eliminates this problem.

After you’ve finished with one stone, move to the next one. I do all my knives in batches and do all on one grit stone before moving to the next.

When you’re finished, as a test, you should be able to easily slice a piece of paper with no effort, just drawing the blade across the paper.

Rinse off any water and swarf, and wipe it down with a dry towel. You now have the sharpest knives in the neighborhood.

What is that thing people do with the steel rod before or after they use their knives? Is that sharpening?

Honing with a steel doesn’t actually sharpen the knife, but it does re-align slight curvatures or displacements that regular use puts on the very very fine sharpened edge of the blade. This can help maintain a better edge for longer, and make it easier and quicker to sharpen the edge when you do use the stones. You should do it every time you cook with your knife.

Whether you decide to go with a quick and easy method, or you go all out with a set of stones, you’ll enjoy the pleasure of cooking with sharp knives. In a follow-up I’ll cover some more esoteric and advanced techniques for getting the ultimate edge.