Bread for the Soul

I had 3 choices for a book to haul down to the courthouse for jury duty, mon dieu, not that! Two of the choices were bread books, the other was "Little Bee," a best-seller but one that I had been warned would make me question my character. That little step I was not ready for on a Monday morning headed to a large and chilly room filled with hundreds of people bearing up under the same dread as I was. Too early for character scrutiny.

Why take a bread book to court? It represented escape from everything around me - the prospect of catching the flu from those who were coughing loudly and often, of being seated on a jury and hearing awful details involving sawed-off shotguns, houses set on fire, or worse.

I considered taking "The Art and Soul of Baking," a book from Sur La Table, which would carry me off to thoughts of pastry as well as bread, but it had a big drawback, weighing in at 5 pounds. The other was Bernard Clayton's "New Complete Book of Breads," a better weight at 2 and a half pounds. Clayton understands the weaving of back stories and bread histories - how to transport you to a different time and place, how to see that bread come to life. He can take you below decks of the SS France to read about boulangers toiling in their skullcaps to produce thousands of fresh rolls for the passengers. He'll set you down beside Antonin Careme in the early 1800s with his daily bread recipe, surviving all these years. He knows a good detail when he sees it, like biscuits nicknamed "touch of grace," or a Viennese bread shaped like a Zeppelin. He knows all about taste, how to get it, shape it and bake it. He offers the breads the world adores; you can't help but drift away.

While sitting on various chairs and benches, I turned down the page ears on several fronts - for Pain Noir, a French black bread; for the Pain de Campagne Honfleur, from the Normandy coast. Also Pain de Campagne Poilane - well come on, how could I not want to throw that together, since I have visited Poilane in Paris in both of its city locations and once plunked down 49 Euros for one of their canvas-lined wicker banneton baskets. When you have eaten Poilane bread, you understand all things. It sticks to your soul like no other. Of course I can't re-create it in Dallas, not really. I have the same chance as making sourdough that tastes like a San Francisco boule. No, it can't be done, but it can be imagined. That is bread's power.

Thinking about it soothed me to the core. Believe me, I needed a core workout. I later made an absolute fool of myself in a room full of potential jurors hearing a robbery case. Robbery? Doesn't the story line of "Les Miserables" involve a theft of bread? No, I couldn't handle it. I owned up to my quirky biases and was out of there, cheeks flaming, bread book wedged under my coat.

Switching tracks, why is there a cupcake on this page? It's from one of the classes I taught at Sur. I like how the student didn't pipe one long curl of buttercream but broke it up into dollops hither and yon. It's not bread, but it has promise.

I think it might be good for the soul. If I can't eat it, at least I can think about it while choosing which bread to go bake. A bread that is braided into a beehive. Or something in black, I think. Pain Noir