Blues is to Jazz

"Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread. Without it, it's flat!" -Carmen McRae

Oh wise aunt! The creation of a thing like bread surely enriches the lives of the maker as well as every muncher involved, just as Jazz with it's Blues spikes the souls of it's musicians and the ears of the listeners involved.

About two years ago, I started to bake bread regularly. I'm still killing sourdough starts regularly, though.
For the first year or so, I had been trying to find that perfect recipe, the one that would understand what I needed out of a dough, and would love and patiently teach me the way all, as young girls dream bread dough someday will.
SIGH.
Instead, I have been trying to pay better attention to the consistency of the dough as it develops, after all a certain amount of humidity in the air is all it takes to create a gap between what the recipe says and what the dough needs. The basics of cooking (chemistry) reveal themselves this way.
I have learned that eggs added to the mix gives me changes in the texture of the finished product and in the dough, how it develops.  Shortening or any sort of fat seems to produce a moist, stale resistant crumb- as no fat and slow, long rising times produc a dry crusty thing of beauty. I learned that forgetting to add the salt is really, a very bad thing.

Now though, the dear wonderful old oven which ever so darlingly takes up space in my kitchen has blown it's element. Oh yes, three play kitchen sized burners and no oven. I'm sure it's two thousand years old in oven years, so I have decided that I'm not going to be terribly surprised or personally assaulted about it. I just have to figure out how to bake bread in the crock pot...

I have noticed that time seems to pass more efficiently and peacefully on they days that have a bowl of dough in them. Kneading by hand for fifteen to twenty minutes is my favorite workout.
THE SMELLS.
My favorite, absolutely most cherished thing about home made bread is of course feeding it to people. And have you all noticed how satisfying it is to dive in, free of the civility of spoons and forks, to a messy bowl of something- and eat using only clean hands and homemade bread? No matter how homely the loaf!