Perfecting Bread to Master Coffee Brewing

In this episode, I dive into my latest obsession: perfecting Japanese milk bread. But this isn't just about bread—it's about how pursuing mastery in one craft can transform your approach to another. I share my journey of deliberately choosing to make Japanese milk bread once a week, experimenting with different flours, ratios, techniques, and baking methods, all while staying intentionally naive to outside influences. I explain why I'm avoiding extensive research and instead learning through trial and error, letting my own curiosity guide the way. Drawing parallels to my experience mastering pork ribs and comparing it to the meticulous dedication shown in "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," I explore how the mindset of perpetual studentship applies to everything we pursue.

What you'll learn from this episode: You'll discover how exploring a craft outside of coffee—whether it's bread making, barbecue, or any other pursuit—can sharpen your coffee brewing and roasting skills in unexpected ways. I'll show you why pushing yourself toward perfection in parallel pursuits creates mental frameworks that translate directly to understanding coffee better, from dialing in your brewer to tasting nuances in your beans. Whether you're in a coffee rut or riding high, this episode will inspire you to find that "other thing" that makes you a better coffee enthusiast.

Transcript

[00:00:00] As you guys know, or don't know, you're about to find out, I like a lot of stuff. I like exploring, I like learning, I like pushing myself.

[00:00:17] And recently, I don't know why, but I am delving back into bread again. And I think it's going to be really cool.

[00:00:34] I used to make bread a long time ago. But recently, I've been looking at recipes, trying to get an idea what I want to do or just trying to explore really. And I don't know if it was just my wife hyping me up saying you used to do really good with bread making. I'm like, whatever, you just want some bread.

[00:01:20] And I started to go down this rabbit hole of trying to make this really good sandwich bread. Tried with my bread maker that I have, does a decent job. But something about pushing myself and going for perfection has got me to this level of wonder, because even though I've made bread before, I'm sure you probably made bread before in some shape and fashion, I wanted to see if I can master it in my own way, in my own liking.

[00:01:59] It's the same thing that I've done with barbecue, with relaying, and really just trying to understand things. I remember there was a time where every week, every week I would smoke some pork ribs. I'd try different recipes, different techniques and all that stuff, and it got to the point where I was making really good pork ribs. And I'm still pretty good at it.

[00:02:32] So in this particular situation, I've landed on Japanese milk bread.

[00:03:01] You've probably already watched "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" and how meticulous and thoughtful and how every single day was a learning experience, never got out of that whole realm of being the student. So I have this obsession and it's okay to have that perfection, that drive into what I'm trying to do.

[00:03:29] How does this really relate to coffee? I think it does because we do have this obsession of greatness and wanting to understand that coffee bean with our coffee brewer and with our palates. But this is a little different just because I'm not making bread every day. You know how we can make coffee every day, multiple times in the day. I think yesterday I made like three or four cups of the same coffee trying to understand that coffee. But in this case I want to do this once a week, once a week of trying different variations, different techniques of making Japanese milk bread.

[00:04:16] So I actually have a smaller one of these, but I went ahead and got the full loaf version of it. I think it came with two, it has holes in it for some reason, so we can do something engineering, right?

[00:04:44] The way I'm going to go about it is that I have a working recipe. I've tried it a couple times, it's come out pretty good, but I think there's so many things that I can do differently in order to make it work. I tried it with all purpose flour, I tried it with bread flour, and yeast here, sugar there and all that good stuff. But I want to keep going down that rabbit hole. I know there's more things that I can do in order to make it truly mine, and that's what I'm going to do.

[00:05:21] I'm going to talk about it, I'm not on this channel though, I don't want to bore you with that. I'm going to just be with myself trying to understand why things are what they are. I'm trying not to read as much as I can about it because at the end of the day I don't want to be swayed one way versus the other. I don't want to be influenced because I want this to be my own. I want to be as naive with the whole situation as I can, and as I become more naive I become more curious and I keep pushing myself to understand the things that I'm really trying to taste in this whole process.

[00:06:05] I may buy some Japanese milk bread somewhere in town just to kind of get an idea of the way they go about it, but that's really more so the extent of my expansion to the world of trying to understand it, meaning that my cues will come from myself. And if I see a picture I will wonder why it looks like that. I'll ask ChatGPT mainly on my recipe and then try different things.

[00:06:48] Anyway, in general, what I'm saying here is that in this bread thing is going to be something cool because I'm picking one thing, I'm trying to understand it fully. And as I do that I'm ultimately going to get better at all the things that I want to do, and that includes coffee.

[00:06:58] Coffee is really cool. Sometimes it's elusive, sometimes it gives you that satisfaction that you crave instantly, sometimes you have to work at it. I understand that coffee is not this whole conquering thing all the time, sometimes it's just a cup of coffee that you want to have before you go to work and all that stuff. But something about pushing myself in another area and how that may relate and all the things that I'm really trying to do with coffee may take me somewhere that I never know that's possible. Does that make any sense?

[00:07:48] It's different enough to where I can learn so many things about the thing that I'm trying to do, but all the different things and drives and challenges that I'm putting myself through, I can apply that to coffee. Again, I don't know how that's going to translate or even if it does at all, but at the end of the day it's one of those things that I'm like, hmm, if I do something here, how would that make me better in coffee? How would that make me better in roasting the coffee? How would that make me better in brewing and understanding that particular device that I'm playing around with or using something that I don't use all the time, playing around with things like that?

[00:08:39] You know, it's one of those things to where you don't know how things are really going to help you. And as I push myself to make this magical bread, I think it's going to help me in making this magical coffee taste even better. And I think the cool thing about it is that of course I'll be documenting in some shape and fashion, but it'll be helpful for you because you may be in a rut of whatever kind, or not at all, everything just working great for you, which is great. But I think at times we do get bored and we wonder about what's on the other side. I guess this is me attempting to kind of go to the other side, just understanding that particular medium, that element in this moment and the way that it works for me and what I like, what I don't like, and how I can translate that more and more into the things I do with coffee.

[00:09:36] I think it's going to be really cool. I don't know if you've gone through that. I'm not here to say that you need to do that in order for you to really understand your coffee. I just know that when I do other things that don't pertain to coffee, I somehow get better at making coffee, understanding coffee, seeing coffee for something more than what I think that I thought about in the past or even present. Maybe give me a different element of trying to understand the things that I want to do with it. I think it's pretty cool.

[00:10:05] So as I sit here and wonder and try to figure out other things that I can do with this bread, I think it's going to come to me as I delve into it. I remember I heard somebody say this before, and people always wonder, okay, how did you figure out what you wanted to do? I didn't. I didn't put it on the board and say this is going to be my life's work. Same thing here with coffee. It's kind of weird that I'm talking to you about coffee and I never knew that this was going to be the thing that I just like gravitated to and just geek out and just love to share whatever I'm talking about.

[00:10:55] But I guess the biggest thing here is that you just do something, you just explore, you just figure it out. And as you figure it out and try to do things, you'll see what you like, what you don't like, the reasons why. And then you may jump onto something else and that thing may be the thing that you just can't stop thinking about, can't stop enduring.

[00:11:25] And I think these little parallel things that we do, they help us because it gives us that much difference in what we do all the time to where we can probably translate and understand the thing that we truly really care about. And the beauty of it is that we just learned another skill that we can relate and kind of understand even more stuff that we're really trying to do in the world.

[00:11:47] So that's why I'm doing bread. I'm just seeing if I can perfect it. You know, I can perfect this particular Japanese milk bread. Try different ingredients, recipes, steep times or whatever I'm going to be doing with this bread. Do it with the cover. Do it without the cover. Know the ratios, knowing how many grams of actual bread batter that I'm putting in here to see if I can get the consistency that I want.

[00:12:34] Those are the things that I'm looking forward to because I know as I delve deeper to that rabbit hole of understanding this particular thing, it's going to help some way somehow with coffee.

[00:12:51] So that's just me talking about something else that's going to help us in coffee. Probably you want to do something different to the point that just pushes you and gets you geeked out in something that you can also just easily translate into what you do with coffee. I think it's pretty cool, whatever it may be.

[00:13:14] So this is Oki at Everyday Beans, talking about milk bread and how it's going to make our coffee better. So talk to you later. Bye.