Reality is something I have always questioned. Highly suspect. My first hint to the semi-permeability of existence, I think, was when I first noticed that people could disappear. In some rooms of the world, people appear, my daily astonishment in Labor and Delivery—the constant blebbing of new people into the world from bournes in dark […]
Category: Yeast Breads
Campagnolo
Bran betters things, in my experience. It aids digestion, adds some extra vitamins to a loaf of bread, and yet it doesn’t weigh the bread down like a heavy wheat flour. This bread has a lovely balance—it is robust and delicate at once. Went great as toast to accompany all the weird international soups I’ve […]
Pane di Chiavari
It is Lundi Gras, the eve of Fat Tuesday, and somewhere up North, two ex-New Orleanians huddle together with their bulldog for warmth and fortitude on yet another brutal subzero morning. That’s enough complaining for Monday. Izzy protested our not going to New Orleans this year, first Mardi Gras we’ve missed in seven years, by […]
Pane alle Olive, or Olive Sochi
Izzy loved the Olympics. Given the weather here in Minnesota, I think Izzy thought she was actually in Sochi, watching curling and ice dancing, gathering olives that fell to the floor like flowers after a gold medal-worthy nap. I will admit that Izzy does more impressive moves in one nap than a freestyle snowboarder completes […]
L’Otto di Merano and Innocence
when god decided to invent everything he took one breath bigger than a circustent and everything began when man determined to destroy himself he picked the was of shall and finding only why smashed it into because – e. e. cummings Last night, I watched the 1979 film Being There alongside our Calvary film club, […]
Country Cowboy Coffee Cake and Strawberry Farms
We went South for the holiday weekend—to Iowa. Our retreat to Strawberry Farms was decidedly not a luxury Valentine’s getaway, it was, rather, like going to visit frumpy parents we don’t have (because our parents are not frumpy). Strawberry Farms had country charm—tap water that smelled of rotten eggs, a limping elderly golden retriever, chipped […]
Piccia Calabrese as Italian Teratoma
The teratoma is the funfetti of all tumors. Just so, the Piccia Calabrese is the teratoma, or funfetti, of all breads. Every Italian ingredient has found its way into this recipe. The bread is a random accumulation of things that don’t seem to quite go together. Molars, hair, nose cartilage, nerve ganglions; Mushrooms, pickles, tomatoes…and […]
Pane Genzano
A simple thought to accompany a simple bread—recently I have entertained the notion that aging—life—is all an unfolding. That is, as babies, we emerge into the world tucked and wrinkled like the pages of well-worn, well-loved books crumpled into paper balls. Then, if all goes well, instead of grow, we merely unfold. And if we’re […]
Molasses Cookie Karma
Whatever specialty I decide to go into, let it be one in which the doctors are paid in cookies. Delivered some babies this week, and this is how I am repaid. What blessed business. Labor and delivery is, I’m convinced, one of the happiest places on Earth. Take that Disney. Are these not the most […]
Ciambelline Valtelline as Cervix
The history of this recipe is lovely. The peoples of the Valtellina valley in Lombardy make these rustic rye rings in communal wood-burning ovens. Each family scores their rings with unique marks so that individuals can easily find their family’s baked rings among those belonging to the neighbors. They hang them on strings in their […]