On Making Bread

“I would say to housewives, be not daunted by one failure, nor by twenty. Resolve that you will have good bread, and never cease striving after this result till you have effected it. If persons without brains can accomplish this, why cannot you?
’Housekeeping In Old Virginia’ Marion Cabell Tyree ed. (1878)

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Bread baking is one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world’s sweetest smells…there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.
M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating, (1990)

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In Paris today millions of pounds of bread are sold daily, made during the previous night by those strange, half-naked beings one glimpses through cellar windows, whose wild-seeming cries floating out of those depths always makes a painful impression. In the morning, one sees these pale men, still white with flour, carrying a loaf under one arm, going off to rest and gather new strength to renew their hard and useful labor when night comes again. I have always highly esteemed the brave and humble workers who labor all night to produce those soft but crusty loaves that look more like cake than bread.
Alexandre Dumas, French writer (1802-1870)

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“The first time I ate organic whole-grain bread I swear it tasted like roofing material.”
Robin Williams

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God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

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Bread is the warmest, kindest of all words. Write it always with a capital letter, like your own name.
from a café sign

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Honest bread is very well – it’s the butter that makes the temptation.
Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857)

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“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight…”
M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating, (1990)

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“You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.”
Henry Miller, American writer (1891-1980)

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“Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?”
Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes (1996)

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Good bread is the great need in poor homes, and oftentimes the best appreciated luxury in the homes of the very rich.
A Book for A Cook, The Pillsbury Co. (1905)

 

4 thoughts on “On Making Bread

  1. Pingback: How To Bake No-Knead Sourdough Rye Bread

  2. Sandi Fentiman

    Yummy looking bread. I still prefer to do it by machine myself. And I love your Idaho kitchen.

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