So it is with bread-making. The ingredients are standardized and
repeatable. I can inexpensively buy several bushels of wheat- and
rye-berries at one time, enough to last a year. Each sack from that
purchase has the same baking qualities. The minor ingredients that
modify my dough's qualities or the bread's flavors are also
repeatable. My yeast is always the same; if I use sourdough starter,
my individualized blend of wild yeasts remains the same from batch
to batch and I soon learn its nature. My rising oven is always close
to the same temperature; when baking I soon learn to adjust the oven
temperature and baking time to produce the kind of crust and
doneness I desire. Precisionist, yes. I must bake every batch
identically if I want the breads to be uniformly good. But not
impossibly rigorous because once I learn my materials and oven, I've
got it down pat.

Composting is similar, but different and easier. Similar in that
decomposition is much like any other fermentation. Different in that
the home composter rarely has exactly the same materials to work
with from batch to batch, does not need to control the purity and
nature of the organisms that will do the actual work of humus
formation, and has a broad selection of materials that can go into a
batch of compost. Easier because critical and fussy people don't eat
or drink compost, the soil does; soil and most plants will, within
broad limits, happily tolerate wide variations in compost quality
without complaint.

Some composters are very fussy and much like fine bakers or skilled
brewers, take great pains to produce a material exactly to their
liking by using complex methods. Usually these are food gardeners