To all the Bakers! Past, Present, Future and Imaginary

Claire, imaginary and past baker

After posting last week’s blog on one of my bread teachers, I recalled a quote from another baking hero of mine. The U.S. baker and author Jeffrey Hamelman says in his book Baking: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes:

What a wonderful feeling it is to turn and look behind us at the hundreds of generations who have baked before us and realize that we have inherited the accumulation of their experience.

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Sad Monk, Happy Monk

The abbey gate and precinct to Boxley Abbey, near Maidstone, Kent

 I am Richard and once was a monk of the Cistercian order at Boxley Abbey, north of Maidstone, Kent. It is now the Year of Our Lord 1389, and I am far from that life of poverty, contemplation, and silence that I lived for most of my years.

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