WHY DO WE bake bread EVERY FRIDAY–sometimes even without chocolate–at a Manchester chocolate shop? Let me tell you.
I love bread.
A bit of an understatement. I love bread.
My first trip to France ten-some years ago I found people who love bread as much as I do. By “people,” I mean “everybody” and by “as much” I mean “more.” The French live for food, particularly bread.
Pain is bread, but bread is not pain. ~French saying
I finished classes and returned to the States. There was bread, but there was no pain. (Okay, there was pain because there was no pain, which makes for a pathetically painful pain pun). I found spectacularly-crafted artisan loaves, but my tongue know they weren’t pain. To consume pain, I’d have to make pain: crisp chewy crust. Translucently moist texture. Sweet flavor of good wheat. Science.
To coax flavor from wheat means a wet wet dough with a long long proof. You can’t knead a wet wet dough, so you fold it over itself hourly many many times. The long proof turned out to be three days. We’re a chocolate shop–having no wood-fired stone oven we bake in a steam-injected electric convection oven with serious pizza stones heater to blistering. You can see the burn marks on my wrists. Our bread is good and improves with each batch.
I don’t know; is it pain?
The tongue is the only judge.