The Joy of Bread
The bakery next door to where I work sells loaves of challah on Fridays. It's not out for sale when I go to get my morning coffee and it's usually sold out when I wander over for my afternoon tea. Yesterday I happened to go over and get some of their fabulous cheese soup for lunch and I was able to snag a loaf. I had a little bit with my soup and it was probably the best bakery version of a challah that I've run across. Not as good as my own, but that's only because I tailored a recipe over the years to fit my exact tastes and preferences. Unfortunately, it's been a very long time since I baked a loaf of bread. I used to bake bread several times a week before I moved in with Rob and I tried it a few times after I moved in here, but there was no decent counter space to knead the bread. My mom offered to get me a bread machine for Christmas, but I reminded her that I had no counter space for such a thing and if I DID have the counter space, then I wouldn't have any use for a bread machine in the first place.

Now that the kitchen remodel is almost done, there's a worktable and I could actually start baking bread again. It's been ten years and I no longer remember my recipes so I suppose I will spend the next five years perfecting new ones. Besides, even if I did still have my old recipes, I'd still have to adjust due to differences in room temperature, humidity, the brand of flour, the yeast, the consistency of the honey, the type of eggs and all the other variation that comes from seasonal ingredients. That's part of the fun. No loaf is ever exactly the same and even my worst loaf is far better tasting than anything store bought. Or bakery bought for that matter if the bakery next door to work is any indication. I'm not saying they are a bad bakery. They have tons of business and most people rave about the place. It's just that having baked my own bread, pastries, pies, cakes and cheesecakes for years I find their bread to be mediocre and everything else has way too much sugar. And my challah had a big lump of flour in the middle of it. Meh.