Bread and Circus

Okay, maybe just bread.

Some time ago, I'd read an article about a fellow who'd come up with a way to make decent bread without a great deal of effort. That article turned out to be what bread writers called 'Sullivan Street Bakery Bread'. I tried the technique, and was taken by it. I'm not a bread freak, so I don't need what one author called 'the perfect crust, splintering in your hand, great crumb', all of that. I just want it to taste good. Oh, okay, I'd like it to taste great, but I'm not willing to go through major efforts to get there.

Then I read a different article about another guy who'd come with with a way to make decent bread without a great deal of effort. This guy was a doctor who just liked to make bread, to tinker with recipes. I am not a tinkerer; I find it hard to accept the idea of trying a recipe forty seven times (including, of course, doing the base recipe multiple times to ensure that you have a repeatable result), changing just a little bit each time. I mean, thats a lot of bread, and a lot of time, too. But I guess this doctor had a lot of time, and a willingness to have a lot of bread lying around. He got involved with a woman who was (cue the trumpets) a Culinary Institute of America-trained pastry chef, and who was very good at it. She gave him the theoretical underpinnings he needed to make his bread work, and was quoted at one point as saying something like 'this goes against everything I learned at the CIA. It should not work -- but it does.'

They wrote a book. The local library system has one, count it, one, copy. After making me wait three months, the library hath delivered it unto me. So, if anyone wants a bunch of loaves of dough -- I think, over the next thirteen and one half days (no renewals on this jewel) , I'll be generating some. Stop by.

Oh, and the brownies turned out nicely.