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Over Thanksgiving, I baked two kinds of bread: dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls.

Both came from the same kitchen.

Both were shaped by the same hands.

Both were guided by the same instincts I’ve relied on for years—watching, listening, smelling, feeling.

And yet, one turned out better than the other.

The dinner rolls were light, tender, and deeply satisfying. The cinnamon rolls were good—but not as soft as I wanted. They lacked that pillowy, almost cloud-like interior that makes a cinnamon roll feel like a gift rather than just a pastry.

At first glance, it would be easy to blame technique or recipe. But the truth runs deeper.

Experience Has a Texture

I know the feel of bread-roll dough.

I know when it’s had enough water.

I know when it’s been worked enough—but not too much.

I know when it’s alive and relaxed rather than tight and resistant.

That knowledge didn’t come from recipes or measurements. It came from repetition. From paying attention. From letting my hands learn what my head couldn’t shortcut.

Cinnamon roll dough is different.

It’s enriched.

It’s softer.

It asks for more gentleness, more patience, more restraint.

And while I understand that intellectually, my hands don’t yet know it the same way. So I treated it—subtly, unconsciously—like a bread dough I already trusted myself with.

The result wasn’t bad.

It just wasn’t fully formed.

Why Precision Wouldn’t Have Saved Me

I could have followed a recipe down to the gram. I could have set timers, weighed flour, and checked hydration percentages. And I did, to a point. But no amount of precision could remove the need to pay attention—because flour changes, humidity changes, and dough responds differently every time.

Precision has its place, especially when learning something new. But it also promises a kind of control that living things simply don’t offer. Bread always requires response. It refuses to be reduced to numbers alone.

The issue wasn’t a lack of discipline or care.

The issue was that I hadn’t yet developed feel for that kind of dough.

No scale can substitute for that.

Formation Takes Time—and It’s Specific

This experience reminded me of something simple but easily forgotten:

Competence does not automatically transfer.

Just because you know how to tend one thing well doesn’t mean you instinctively know how to tend another—especially when it requires a different kind of attention.

Some doughs need strength.

Some need softness.

Some need to be pushed.

Some need to be left alone.

The wisdom isn’t in doing more.

It’s in knowing what kind of care this thing requires.

A Quiet Word from Scripture

Scripture tells us that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). Not because wisdom starts with anxiety or rigid control, but because it begins when we learn to approach what is alive with reverence rather than mastery.

Perhaps this is why Scripture so often speaks of wisdom as something tasted and seen, not calculated and proven. Living things resist domination. They invite attention.

What I’m Taking With Me

The dinner rolls confirmed what my hands already know.

The cinnamon rolls revealed what they don’t—yet.

And that, too, is a gift.

Because wisdom isn’t pretending mastery where it hasn’t been earned.

Wisdom is staying present long enough for your instincts to be formed.

Next time, the dough will be different.

And so will I.