Par-baking is a cooking technique where bread is baked to near completion (eighty percent or so) then quickly frozen. The bread can be stored and then finished off another time.

Unfortunately, projects don’t usually work this way.

Partly baked, unfinished projects tend to freeze on their own … into a kind of stuckness that’s hard to overcome.

Better to stay with it — even through some discomfort — to usher the work into its completion.

The kitchen is going to smell great either way, but fully baked loaves are much more satisfying than a stocked freezer.