I turn my oven’s temperature knob as high as it will go, then change into spandex. I’m about to bake pita bread.
Making fluffy, perfectly hollow pita bread is so easy sometimes, I do it when I can’t think of what to make for dinner. The required 6 ingredients: yeast, sugar, water, flour, salt and olive oil, sit by a stainless steel bowl on the counter. Everything looks ready.
But, as any seasoned baker will tell you, there is so much more at play in making pita bread puff out, then a good, hot oven, the right ingredients and athletic wear to speed up moving trays in and out of the oven.
I’ve gone through spells when everything seems just right, but only flat-bread comes out of my oven. Perfect pita is born of high heat, live yeast, weight-standardized flour, light sea salt, heavy olive oil, tepid water, perfect timing, a moment of non-equilibrium, chemical thermodynamics, the earth’s weather and more. No matter how many times I’ve made pita bread worthy of stuffing, I don’t control every variable.
David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us, points out how little control you have over your own environment and the environment in which your children grow. The variables are infinite. But you can prepare the terrain so energy explodes, puffs-up, obvious to be indisputable, with surplus joules to share, like a perfect pita.
For two weeks I’m writing about Creativity’s Terrain and the variables you can control to foster Creation.
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Filed under: Creativity's Terrain Tagged: | Baking and Creativity, Creative Energy, Creative Energy Affected by Many Variables, Creative Environments, Creativity in Adults, Creativity in Children, David Shenk, Energy for Creativity, Series, Variables for Creativity
what imagery! I loved it!