Bread
Doomscroll less, eat more gluten
Like many people, I’ve tried to make bread, I ordered the recommended flour, I nursed a burbling jar, I failed.
Maybe also like many people, I did not try again.
My feeling toward bread is love, not like. I eat bread every day, and I’m lucky enough to be able to buy great bread within a ten-minute walk. But I can also stay at home—years ago, someone taught me the trick to keep pre-sliced bread in the freezer, such that excellent toast can be made at any time. (Similar to the trick of keeping just-ripe avocados in the fridge, where they last for weeks).
Bread is crostini, tartines, avocado toast.
Bread is late-night tunamelts.
What can be said of bread can be said of language: adaptable, essential, textured. Unearth a person’s feelings toward bread, unearth a person; land in Paris, seek out a jambon beurre. An early memory sees my mother at the kitchen island eating half a ham sandwich on whole wheat, same for a recent memory.
I like how the aroma of bread is always slightly damp.
I like how a person eats bread with quiet, repeated bites.
I read a book in the morning and eat bread, toast with cheese, and it’s like napping in the sun.
Bad bread is dismaying. Elizabeth David definitely thought so; this is from her book English Bread and Yeast Cookery, published in 1977—
What is utterly dismaying is the mess our milling and baking concerns succeed in making with the dearly bought grain that goes into their grist. Quite simply it is wasted on a nation that cares so little about the quality of its bread that it has allowed itself to be mesmerized into buying the equivalent of eight and a quarter million large white factory-made loaves every day of the year.
The dearly bought grain that goes into their grist!
And sure, bread can get stale, get retrograded, but that’s not always a bad thing. (But now apply that metaphor to your life.) Personally I don’t drink much bread (beer), I definitely don’t drink bread when I eat bread (pizza); too much bread makes me feel bloated. I was thinking yesterday morning, do wealthy people ever feel bloated by their money, or does getting richer make them more hungry? Bread is synonymous with sustenance, livelihood, the basic necessities—“daily bread” and “breadwinner”—but not really with opulence or excess.
Old people feed bread to the birds.
A little research tells me the word “companion” comes from the Latin com (”with”) plus panis (“bread”). Which is to say, bread is what we break with those we love.
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What the what
“Meditations in an Emergency” is a weekly essay from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus things to love, plus a monthly travel-lust ballyhoo.
Rosecrans is a correspondent for GQ, a contributor at Travel + Leisure, and the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
For magazine articles, bio, contact info: rosecransbaldwin.com.
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