I want to tell you what actually happened Saturday. Shirley tossed three batches. Three. She described them as not salvageable by any means. This is a person who spent her Saturday trying. Not watching. Not reading about it. Actually trying, and failing, and trying again. And then Sunday she baked a loaf. It was flat. It wasn't great. It passed the taste test. And she was more excited to cut it open than she's ever been about a loaf that looked perfect. Here's what that means: the failure was the education. Every batch she threw away taught her something about her dough, her kitchen, her process. The flat loaf was the result of all of that. And loaf number five, her words, will be even better. This is the only way it works. You don't get good at bread by watching someone else do it. You get good at bread by making bad bread until you understand why it went wrong. What was your worst bake? Drop it in the comments. Tell me what happened and what you learned.