Practice Makes Perfect(ish)

Years ago, there was a PBS reality show called Frontier House, where a few couples and their children were dropped into an 1800's existence somewhere in middle of nowhere, Wild West. Other than the young man who built a log cabin with his dad, the person who sticks in my mind was the woman who could bake bread from memory. Oh, what's so hard about it? Flour, yeast, water, salt. You'd be surprised.  I stayed away from bread baking for years, assuming it took a level of precision I'm just not built for. Then, I got a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day(the old one) from the library. And over the last few months, I've started to get the hang of the bread baking thing, just from having a big container of dough sitting in the fridge, ready to go whenever the mood the strikes me.  Fair disclosure, it's the mixing that takes 5 minutes, the dough still has to proof for an hour and bake for another 40 minutes.