Bread Day

Another end of winter storm today and the snow fell all morning. It looked like tons of the white stuff. A perfect day to make good on the promise I made Dianne last night: I would make bread today—the image post is huge but gets the point across. I actually love baking bread I find the exercise entertaining, relaxing and even sexual in a tactile sort of way. I think I like the process especially. You see I use a mixer to make my bread. I think that’s cheating a little and I think the bread looses a little the more machinery one uses but I really don’t have a surface right now which lends itself to good bread making. I believe the best bread comes form bread with the hands. Think there is an exchange at the molecular level which influences the greatly enhances the flavor of the end product. Maybe it the gentleness of the hands on the dough or the sweat or hand oils transferring into the dough something happens with the direct touch versus the machine’s influence on the dough.

I made the bread today mainly for myself. I intend to have more toast in the morning then I have been. Toast from bakery bread is OK but just not the same. So I decided I would have some “real” bread round for toast this week. Actually toast is the only justification I can figure for homemade bread. When I was growing up my mother made bread every week. Six loaves of great tasting bread is great for toast but not so good for lunches. The product tends to crumble and disintegrate by the time its time for lunch. Thank goodness for peanut butter. This was the only substance which came close to holding my sandwiches together. Actually I must admit that homemade bread was a novelty at the school I went to. MY mom was the only mom who sent their kids tom school with bread from the home hearth. I could usually trade my sandwich for one made of wonder bread or Roman Meal or some other soft white wonder. You will see Dianne also got into the act. I was preparing the loaves for baking and she wanted to make one of the loaves a cinnamon raisin loaf. I figured that was cool since I probably could not eat two regular loaves of cracked wheat before the bread went bad. The loaves tuned out and I am pleased to have done something productive with my Sunday. I spent most of the day, again, stalling more software onto the system and transferring backed up files to various folders.

In the reformatting of Colossus, main system, I am really taking some time on how I am using my folders. Before I was fairly random and I had files everywhere on my drive. I am ordering this a lot better this go round and all ready I can tell a difference.

I did to out and get gas today. Dianne has misplaced the keys to the Audi and so she has been using the van. I knew we were getting low on gas and I should have filled it yesterday before the storm but oh no not me. By the time I got going out and about this afternoon the sun had come out and the snow was melting and actually quite nice. It was nice to get out and we are ready for Monday.