Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I have actually blogged about this very topic. Except when I bake I tend to skip dinner or have just a little, so I don't have to feel bad eating some of that bread fresh out of the oven. Not that that would stop me, most likely.

Here is what I wrote (I included the bread recipe I posted in another thread):
I love to bake. For most of the people reading this blog, that will not be any sort of surprise at all, since you all know me pretty well. I started baking as a kid. We didn't buy cookies at the store like some families do. If we wanted cookies, somebody had to bake them. Since I was usually the one that wanted them, I was usually the one who baked them. I developed my own recipe, based off the Toll House recipe, quite young. I’ll share it with you if you ask nicely. I used to make cookies after dinner. I distinctly remember making people pause the movie so I could run into the kitchen to take another batch out of the oven without missing anything. I suppose that was kind of annoying to the other movie watchers, but I always came back with warm chocolate chip cookies, so I can’t imagine they minded that much. By the time the cookies were done, I had usually eaten enough dough that I had no interest in cookies at all. But they keep, and there is always tomorrow.

In college, I lived in a co-op called Columbae. The house was owned by the university, I believe it had started life as a fraternity house. The co-ops were kind of the anti-fraternities. I will just say, forty people (male and female) between the ages of 19 and about 24 (we had a few grad students), living in the same house, making every decision by consensus, and moving rooms every quarter. I will leave you with that image and save Columbae for a future post. It was there that I learned to bake bread. Every weeknight, it was somebody’s job to make a huge batch of bread for the whole house. For a while I held that job, and loved it. I would start prep after the dinner cleanup crew finished (about 8:00 or so). Bread would come out of the oven around midnight. The smell would always attract the many brain-dead students still awake, pulling them away from studying for a much-needed carbohydrate boost. The bread cognoscenti say that you shouldn’t cut it until it has cooled to room temperature (it lets some steam escape, resulting in drier bread). My mothers (yeah, I’ve got two, and a father, again, a subject for another post) believe hot bread will clog your ileocecal valve. I, on the other hand, am a firm believer in cutting one loaf right away, while it is too hot to touch, spreading some butter and honey on a piece, and enjoying it immediately with a cold glass of milk. This moment is about 50% of why I make my own bread.

My bread is, I believe better than what you can buy in the store. At least, I like it better. That is one of the biggest benefits of doing one’s own cooking (aside from saving money, and generally healthier eating). When I make my own food, I can make it to my taste. I like plain whole wheat bread, no nuts or seeds, moist and fluffy. So that is the bread my recipe makes. Just like I tinkered with the Toll House cookie recipe years ago to fit my tastes I have come up with my own favorite bread recipe. It is primarily drawn from Mollie Katzen’s basic bread recipe (I still send people to her hand-drawn illustrations of bread baking when they ask me how to bake) and Nancy Silverton’s everyday whole wheat, combined with everything I have learned in my fifteen year obsession with bread. For those who would like to try it, my recipe is attached below. I intend, someday, to publish it, along with other recipes I have developed. Feel free to use it, alter it, bake from it whatever you want. Please, just don’t publish it as your own. And cut a piece of that first loaf out of the oven, eating it hot however you like it best. Damn the bread cognoscenti and the ileocecal valve (whatever it may be).

Sounds like one of those things someone in the distant past made up to keep her kids out of the freshly baked bread -- like those stories about swallowing bubblegum.

My granddad and his brother could never wait for the bread to even be baked. They'd pinch of bits of the dough and fry them. My great-grandmother had to make extra, just so there'd be enough to bake.

Tim, do you still have a blog? Where could we find it?

That waiting time for bread to cool is torture (mine comes out of the machine maker). Not as bad as driving a hot pizza home in the car though.

I agree with Jean, a hormone burst will always make me ravenous.

EB: I do have a blog, which I update occasionally. It isn't really food related, I just talked about bread for that one. If you are interested: Here is a link

After I had Katie, I was so sick for such a long time I couldn't tolerate the thought of most food, but bread was one of the very few things I could tolerate and even craved. I'm still a sucker for a freshly baked loaf.