Bread is like knitting: Once you get a good look at how it works, you wonder how the heck anyone first thought to do that, and exactly how long it took them to figure it out.

Breadmaking, in its broadest strokes, is mixing tiny, carbon-dioxide-producing fungi, or yeasts, into flour and water. The hands of the baker create a structure that hitches the yeast's tendency to release gas to the water-and-flour dough's tendency to form a taut, elastic skin. After that's allowed to ripen, heat transforms the structure into its permanent form – or at least as permanent as really good, fresh-baked bread can ever be, which is to say, rather transient.