Cooking

Added Fire

Seething

I'm taking this awesome MOOC on Science&Cooking Approaching cooking as chemistry with a limited set of chemicals.  I always thought of cooking as a set of rituals.  Follow the rituals => good food!

Science is a new view.

I've been at it for a while and so far, I've been happy to eat everything I've made, and what could be better than that? So I'm not a cook, but I cook and I'm working on it.  

Today, I baked my first bread.  The kiss of the boulangere.  A simple white bread, excellent.  Bread is special.  Now I know it is possible.  I must have it again.

And now, it is two days later and First bread was excellent, magical.  My idea, at least, of what a white bread should be. And pure luck.  And now,

I, Western Man, must master it, make it mine.

Today, on round 2, I discovered that I hadn't written down quite everything.  How much water?  Fortunately, even a rank amateur could recognize that the dough I got was a bit runny; and after getting my proportions straight, I ended up with the paste for 2+ loaves and no bowl to hold it.  Of course, I didn't know the bowls were too small until they overflowed in the oven.

After an emergency call with my bread guru, I divided the dough into halves.

Waiting for Fire

Dough in the Clouds

Now, it's been baked and, while nice looking and reasonable for a second try, it doesn't come close to the miraculous event of the First Baking.

So now it has happened.  I will seek the perfect loaf, I know it is there, I have tasted its goodness and my quest is clear.  I must rediscover the perfect loaf and learn to perform the rituals in the kitchen to share her deliciousness again.  I see the perfect loaf everywhere, in the sky, on the rack.  Just out of reach.