Wood-fired, wild-yeasted, whole grain
I don’t consider myself a professional baker by any means. I’ve never studied a baking program, never worked in a bakery. I’ve learned a few tricks from books, watched a few videos like everyone else. And I’ve learned a bit by doing. Making larger quantities of bread than just a couple of loaves at a time.… Continue reading
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout By Gary Snyder Down valley a smoke haze Three days heat, after five days rain Pitch glows on the fir-cones Across rocks and meadows Swarms of new flies. I cannot remember things I once read A few friends, but they are in cities.… Continue reading
In the dark, it’s a haunting presence, this island to the southwest off the prow of our property. I often see it in the moonlight, in the early morning hours of a bake day.… Continue reading
I’ve been thinking of how a sensory experience — an image, a taste, a sound — can trigger a flood of memories, long forgotten, that transport you instantly to another time or place.
How Marcel Proust tastes a madeleine cookie at the beginning of Remembrance of Things Past. He is overtaken with a feeling, “an exquisite pleasure … something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.”… Continue reading
The New Bread Basket by Amy Halloran starts off a little like Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. The taste of a simple cookie, a madeleine, inspires a flood of memories for Proust. In Halloran’s case, an oatmeal ganache cookie, a treat from her husband, awakens a taste for flour and all that was entailed in bringing it to the oatmeal ganache cookie.… Continue reading