Omens

The superstitious part of me that gives in to chills when a streetlight flickers off as I drive beneath it or prompts me to toss a pinch of salt over my shoulder when I topple the shaker is rearing its ugly head as I write this first food blog. In the spirit of creating this blog and taking an anthropology class about food and culture, I decided to make bread yesterday. Not just any bread, artisan bread. Putting it in italics makes it fancy, see?

I received a beautiful, glossy cookbook from my mother last week for my 27th birthday, called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking, which claims I can put forth a mere five minutes of effort and treat myself and loved ones to warm, artisan bread everyday. The first chapter of this book drew me in, teasing me with Da Vinci Code-like promises of great yeasty truths and crusty secrets waiting to be unfurled within its pages. I stole my mother's pizza stone and got to work.

The creation of the dough was uneventful and, surprisingly, as easy as the authors claim. The baking of it was the ominous part. Ten minutes into the high-temperature baking of my lovely French bread with perfectly executed scallop-slices in the crust, I heard a horrible crack. The poor old pizza stone didn't withstand the 500 degree temperature. The bread had already formed a crust, perfectly steamed and crackling, so I was still in good shape.

Now I hunt for a suitably sized saltillo tile to replace the stone since I can't fathom shelling out $50 for what essentially amounts to $.83 of clay. The search has been fruitless thus far but a plain old cookie sheet under the one pound loaves I have made since seems to be adequate.

I need to make another loaf and get better photos than the one I have offered. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks have been good excuses to slice off a slab of chewy bread and slather it in warm, gooey egg yolk, leftover roasted chicken, or raw honey. So far the bread has been disappearing before I can get in there with my camera - a good sign, perhaps? Maybe all will be well, after all.