The Appalachian Trail runs from Georgia to Maine and passes within a quarter mile of the bakery—you can see it from the parking lot. Hikers with large packs pass daily, traveling north or south, followed by a cloud of scent, as evidence of the difficulty (and infrequent showers!) of the 2,100-mile route. Shortly after we arrived in Vermont, I began running our many miles of wooded trails, following ribbons of dirt or snow down the endless tree tunnel, foraging in cellar holes and old rock walls that had been retaken by forest. In time I found that if short runs were good, then longer ones were even better. I spent hours in the woods sweating and covering long distances, and I worked my way up to six- or seven-hour trail runs and then races, competing at distances greater than the length of a marathon, sometimes up to fifty miles in a day. The racing wasn’t about competing—I certainly wasn’t winning anything—it was about journeying, beginning something tremendous, a challenge that dwarfed fitness and confidence and, in the end, surviving. We don’t have to run super-distances to find challenges; even parenting will work, and it certainly requires more than what we possess as we leave the hospital with a swaddled bundle—we grow into and within the challenge. I grew as a runner and found my craft by signing up for races that I doubted I could complete. Failure is OK. The improvement, the training, the practice of the craft . . . that is winning.

I found my way to this same place with bread. A friend of mine, Michael Rhodes, was the team captain for a small group of bakers chosen to represent the United States in the SIGEP Cup competition in Italy. Michael called the bakery one day and asked if I would be a late addition to the team. Competitive bread baking takes bread design, shaping, and baking to a level far above what is normally expected. Every aspect, from texture to flavor, color, shape, innovation, and finishing techniques, is scrutinized and examined.

After we developed and practiced our individual items at our respective bakeries, the small four-person team gathered for intensive sessions in the snowy dead of January at New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vermont, where Michael was chair of the baking and pastry department. The SIGEP competition requires teams to prepare multiple breads, viennoiserie (pastry products using laminated brioche or croissant doughs), and a decorative sculptural piece made entirely of dough. In some competitions the components must all be completed, start to finish, during the eight-hour competition day and usually include an additional one to two timed hours of setup the evening before. The year that we competed, SIGEP allowed teams to arrive with pieces of a decorative bread sculpture already made and finish the sculpture on-site. Decorative works are large dioramas made entirely of doughs that handle like Play-Doh; these sculptures are often colored with spices, textured with seeds and grains, and even silk-screened before being assembled with glue made from molten sugar. Michael built, among the many other preparations for the trip, a large multicolored rooster that he had designed to perch on a log (also made of dough). After days of practice we packed his sculpture; loaded our many ingredients, tools, aprons, and passports; and headed south to fly out of JFK. Arriving in Heathrow, we found that all outbound flights were canceled due to snow.

Traveling with sourdough culture is not unlike traveling with a baby. It must be fed on a schedule, held, wooed, and even burped occasionally; and it presents the additional challenge of airport security tending to dislike it. After finding flour in a mini-mart near the hotel (our bags weren’t accessible) and spending a night on British soil, we headed back to the airport to try to make our way to Italy. While we were waiting among the delayed, cranky masses, our needy babies eventually hollered for another feeding of flour and water. We debated our options for the feeding; clandestine option A, which was to hide behind a construction barrier and conceal this strange activity; or option B, “nothing to see here . . . just mixing strange pastes and pouring them into sealed stainless-steel vials to put in our carry-on luggage.” We chose B and proceeded, tasting the culture even more than was necessary, trying to project the edible nature of our science experiment goop to those huddled around us, gawking and confused.

Eventually we were able to board and move on, but because of our delayed arrival, we made it to Rimini very late and lost our entire preparation day. We frantically set about making doughs and final preparations in our hotel rooms, working well into the night and finishing only a few hours before our competition day would begin. Somewhere in the middle of that dark night, Michael opened the suitcase with the rooster and I heard a significant amount of cursing. I ran next door to find him with pieces of the shattered rooster in his hands. We eventually advanced beyond the crying stage, ready to give our best effort in spite of our broken bird, and I began the rituals I had rehearsed, making the three breads that were to be my contribution.

The first bread was a walnut ciabatta with a dark, barklike crust and an open interior, accented with toasted black walnuts and English walnuts and infused with walnut oil. I rolled the dough in coarse bran for texture and made a stencil by photographing the bark of a walnut tree, then cut out the dark lines between the bark pieces. I applied the stencil and dusted over it with white flour just before baking. While the stencil is fun, this loaf will disappear quickly with or without the stunning visual.