Great Bread Experiment

When that little old lady refused to give Jerry Seinfeld her loaf of marble rye, I laughed and laughed. But I also wondered, what is it about a loaf of bread that would inspire such desperate thievery?

All I knew about bread was that it was white with a sawdust crust and that it had an annoying tendency to stick to the roof of my mouth. I believed the worst part about pizza was the crust, whether fluffy, crispy, bubbly, or soggy. People who liked breadsticks were clearly inferior beings. And that bread-baking smell that everyone claimed to love? Entering a Subway made me nauseous.

I wish I could remember what exactly happened between the airing of "The Rye" in 1996 and today. Today, I get it. I love bread. What I mean is, I love bread made with a certain amount of love. And so I decided if I wanted really good bread all the time, I needed to learn to make it myself.

This decision happened maybe 5 years ago. While I made a few valiant attempts to bake my own bread, each was a complete failure. So I shoved the whole idea way back into the far recesses of my brain. Someday, I thought, Someday I will have the time and the patience and the money to make really good bread.

It's funny because maybe Someday is here. My friend Katherine loaned me this book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I tried it. My final product probably wouldn't provoke a mugging or warrant a $50 pricetag, but at least it was edible and not in that this-took-me-all-day-to-make-and-I'm-going-to-eat-it-goddammit! kind of way.