The Satisfaction or Baking Bread

I’ve been baking more bread lately. Other people have too. There is no better time to have previously been a flour collector: I normally have many different kinds of flour—cake flour, three kids of all purpose, bread flour, assorted whole wheats, to say nothing of semolina, almond flour, potato flour and other speciality items. On a practical note, I keep many of them in the freezer.

Yesterday, I made King Arthur Flour’s Pain de Mie . I usually have trouble with the second rise. But this time, when I forgot to set a time and got interrupted, and messed up the timing and temperature to the point of over-rising, which I find is generally worse than under-rising…The bread turned out beautifully.

It is an undeserved success and I may not be able to replicate it, but I’m going to enjoy it.