What Are Friends For? You Might Well Ask..

Since I started baking bread, I've been gifted with a number of bread cookbooks, all of which I've enjoyed reading, even though I know I will never be making any number of the wonderful sounding breads within their pages. Each carries personality of the baker, some more technical than others, but all with the goal of inducing in the reader the breadth wealth of potential, the passions, nay, even the hope to bake bread that will rival at least a photo or two.

Until this last book. A friend, at least I thought she was a friend, gave me what she termed as a lighthearted look at baking bread (52 Loaves - A Half-Baked Adventure); the author's attempt, over 52 weeks, to bake what he considered the perfect loaf of peasant bread, a bread not unsimilar to my own in its simplicity.

He does not believe in simple however. His quest goes over in to the obsession range arena soon enough, due to a lack of air holes. He deals with what he thinks may be dementia, goes to bakers far and wide, builds a wood burning oven, grows a patch of wheat, goes to France, goes to Morocco and then back to France, to bake bread in a monastery, which is where I've left him for the moment, not yet to the Holy Grail being found. He's made me doubt the very tiny bit I know about baking bread (which is, put it together, bake it, hope that people like it) and wonder what I am doing. At least I've never called myself a baker, and now I doubt I ever will. But yes, he's funny and that helped a lot.

No wonder I overslept an hour and a half, waking to find my alarm set on 'set' not on 'save'. Oops! So as I type, the second to last round of bread is baking, when I am usually setting up my table and heading out the door. Dementia is the least of my problems. I think.

Ok, back to the Joy of Baking! And it is a joy; what else could I do where I'm at home, filling the air with the various aromas of baking bread? If I could just remember to be sure the alarm is set...

Have a timely Tuesday! Do something thoroughly.