Bread

After three months of trying to teach myself to cook and only experiencing marginal improvement, I decided I need professional help. Tonight I took a breadmaking class. The instructor was an owner & baker at a local bakery. I realized tonight that I'd never have the passion that a professional has. I love to eat, and cooking and baking is fun, but when the instructor told us a story about when he was nineteen and got to meet some world famous chef (who I never head of) and was able to talk to him about proofing baskets, couches, and lames, I knew that baking would never be more than a fun hobby for me. This guy was serious about his bread. Very serious. He did a pretty good job of teaching the class to a bunch of novices and home bakers, but I knew he was really holding back. Every now and then he'd get excited and start talking about proteins, enzymes, esters, crumb vs. crust ratio and blah blah blah. He gave us several of his recipes, but he said there was really no point in using them because we could just go down the street and buy bread from his bakery. Rather, we were supposed to experiment and fine tune the ingredients and method into our own creation, according to our own culinary preferences. Okay that sounds great, but if his recipes get my bread anywhere near close to the stuff he sells in his shop, I'm sticking with that. The guy has been making bread for 30 years, I doubt I'll find much flaw in it, let alone bake something better. So, we'll see how my bread comes out tomorrow.

I took Jonah to the toddler gym today.

The tow-truck scoot car is one of the more coveted toys.