The Wonders of Bread

I love bread, and I’m often amazed by it.

Think about it. Someone figured out that it was a great idea to mix crushed grain with water into a dough and cook it over a fire to create the first bread.

Later on, through accident or design, leavening agents (such as yeast) allowed for the dough to rise, creating the “modern” bread.

When I’m totally starving, I can devour an entire sourdough baguette. Plain.

Bread is, simply said, another of life’s simple pleasures.

Bread Appeals to all the Senses

• Sight – have you ever looked at breads? I’m not talking about the factory-made, store bought “clones” like Wonderbread, but rather the artisan, hand-made breads, where each individual loaf has a crust that’s unique unto itself, almost like a fingerprint, but similar to the other members of its “breadthen”. Some breads are “lacerated” prior to baking, resulting in crust with character — hills and valleys, nooks and crannies. The texture continues inside each loaf, in the “crumb”, where leavened breads exhibit air pockets, some fine and uniform, others randomly sized, almost swiss cheese-like. The natural colors of bread are all warm, earth tones. A bread loaf is such a simple looking thing from afar, but really a feast for the eyes seen up close.
• Smell – one of the best smells on earth is the smell of freshly-baked loaves of bread, just brought out of the oven. There’s something so rejuvenating about that smell, and being exposed to fresh bread simply flips my gastronomic dial to “hungry”.
• Touch – with fresh bread, one does not need to even slice it — tearing off a large chunk works just fine. The crust breaks apart, and the interior stretches, releasing steam into the air. The aroma is especially strong then.
• Taste – and who can resist simply munching down on a piece of freshly baked bread, no spreads, no condiments needed. Yum! Of course, after a few hours, when cooled, the bread invites one to ply its surface with a favorite spread or jam, or perhaps to turn it into a toast of some sort — say, garlic bread!
• Hearing – and when we’re greedily devouring our favorite breads, we also experience the crackle of new bread being broken, or the crunch of perfectly toasted garlic bread, and of course the rumblings of the stomaches of everyone careless enough to see you savoring.

Anyone hungry yet?

(I’m not even going to go into all the types of breads out there — my favorite’s sourdough French bread — more information on bread can be had in this Wikipedia entry.)

If you liked this post, you may also like my earlier post: Simple Pleasures of Life

Photo credit: isolatediguana

Other posts you may enjoy:

1. Sourdough article
2. Chronicle Article on Bread
3. Simple Pleasures of Life
4. 5 More Simple Pleasures

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