Bread baking has consumed me, it’s taken over my life, even my brother say’s I have a yeast infection!That maybe true…..for me bread is nurturing,the smell, taste,and  as the son of an artist I appreciate the color, well I know it’s usually brown, but there are varying tones and even red hue interspersed with the white,a mininalist palate!Then the shapes, grigne(the cut produced from the slash  of a lame),the feel of the dough,but most of all the silence when making bread, if not just the image of rising in the morning(very early)and quietly measuring,mixing(by hand)and finally baking…it’s a simple ritual that bakers have followed for ages. While I love to cook food, I find a different rythm in bread baking, in a restaurant you have to deal with waiters,plates,pots,knives,the list is endless!Bread is slow food, cooking while relaxing(when at home) is speed,rush and out it goes, bread on the other hand stay’s with you,literally!, The process is long,the levain is always perpetuated, it could out live you! It involves little mixing if you believe in the new artisan(new? this is an old craft!)methods of hand mixing advocated by bakers like Dan Lepard, then the intermittent folding, the fermenting, the pre-shaping, the final shaping and of course the bake! It’s a balance and  I find the bug has bitten and I am folding some dough now for a show stopper loaf, country levain,I guess my brother is  right I am a  junkie, not to yeast, real natural yeast !