sweet dreams

Last night, I dreamed that I attended a large birthday party. They were just beginning to hand around cakes, brownies, pastry and stuff - lots and lots. I believe I saw about 20 items in huge piles, chocolaty ones, flaky ones and some big bits with thick layers of sugary gleaming icing.

I had just managed to think that I’d better skip most of the powdery brownies (while munching one) and other lesser kinds in favor of the ones with the most icing when I woke up.

bread

Few activities apart from mushroom picking, wood chopping and train spotting are as close to our origins as bread baking. It is therefore sad that many people have a superstitious fear of yeast and sourdough. Bread-baking cookbooks usually do not make the matter easier in their frantic efforts to justify their existence with an abundance of superfluous folklore recipes. Bread results from flour, one or another kind of yeast, salt, water and some experience - everything else is luxury. The idea of a fixed and repeatable recipe for bread, based on notions such as that the absorbing properties of equal quantities of flour from different sources are comparable, or that a given amount of yeast will behave largely in the same way whether it is mid-winter or August, is ridiculous. Recover your mud-pie-baking mindset and experiment until you’ve got it.