I made a loaf of bread today, for the first time.

I sometimes bake sweets, including cookies and cupcakes, but had neer tried bread befrore. Some people on Discord were talking about no-knead bread, and the person who went shopping for us a couple of weeks ago managed to get both flour and yeast, so I gave it a try.

cattitude and I ate a bit under half the loaf for dinner, with butter on mine and honey on his. Theere was a little bit of pickled herring, and Cattitude had some olives, but mostly we ate the bread, as soon as it had cooled down after baking.



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Sometimes, even knowing exactly what you want doesn't help.

We got a sampler of cheese and other products from a dairy upstate. One of the items is chocolate butter.

So I need bread. Thin breadsticks won't do it--I need bread suitable for sweet butter, an afternoon snack sort of bread-and-butter.

I was thinking idly about getting sourdough at a bakery near my office, then decided a good white bread would be better. A moment later, I knew exactly what I wanted: a baguette. Specifically, I was remembering, and wishing for, a baguette I bought over a year ago, still warm from the oven, and how good it tasted as I ate the first bite walking down the street to the Metro station.

That's the problem. The Metro station. The bakery in question is in Paris.

There may be someplace in New York that does really good baguettes, but when you look for a French bakery around here, what you'll find is pastry. There's nothing wrong with pastry, but what I want is a baguette, fresh out of the oven, to go with my wonderful sweet clementines and the chocolate butter heart and a pot of good, strong Ceylon tea.

There are worse things than pleasant memories of good food, and there are good bakeries in walking distance of where I'm typing this, and a cup of tea on my desk, and one last square of dark chocolate Susan gave me as a holiday gift.