Bread time (again)

I called on a friend this afternoon.  She's a very able baker, so I was looking forward to telling her all about my recent adventures in breadmaking...until she announced that she has taken up a pre-agrarian diet and sworn off grains of any kind.

So I shall give you the latest installment instead.  On another friend's recommendation (thank you!), I have obtained a copy of the Tassajara Bread Book - a classic volume from 1970, written by Edward Espe Brown, now a Buddhist priest but once head cook at a Zen monastery in California.  It contains some advice that completely contradicts what I found in the last bread book I was using - but, of course, there's more than one way to make a loaf.  So far I'm hopeful that this method might be the one for me.  The house is smelling good and bready again.  The rolls should just about be out of the oven by the time I've finished writing this blogpost.

I like the dedication in the front of the Tassajara book.  It is very thorough:

Dedicated
with respect and appreciation
to all my teachers
past, present and future:
gods, men, and demons;
beings, animate and inanimate,
living and dead, alive and dying.
Rock and water
wind and tree
bread dough rising
Vastly all
are patient with me.