Thank you, Salty Poolish-Sensei

Great success this time around.  Magnificent flavor.  Unparalleled crust.  Only 2 tsp yeast, stopped just before I thought I was done kneading, proofed for about 2 hours instead of 40 minutes, used Crystal Geyeser bottled water instead of brita-ed tap… but the most important secret?

Fresh mountain air…

A bike ride in the woods…

And a dip in a cool mountain stream  

by which I mean fucking glacial.

Peace!

A cup of flour sees two teaspoons of yeast sitting at the bar all alone one afternoon…

It was not without a twinge of sadness that I prepared all the ingredients last night to cook my first full meal in almost a year. It was a simple meal. I had to start easy. Pasta sauce and two kinds of bread. I didn’t even make my own pasta, and I made way too much of it. But the sauce was a hit, eaten almost entirely out of the pan with a spoon before the salad was even tossed. The rustic loaf was too salty, which is a first for me, but with a fine crust. The crumb needs improvement, but that’s what I get for cooking in an electric oven.

Ah, the old maxim is true. An empty day is a happy day. I’m on vacation in mid-state Washington with my family. It’s just the four of us for the first time since Thailand 2002, which was an absolute nightmare of arguments and animosity and disassociations. Now were are all grown, and we all get along, and Leo and I ride bikes and talk about the architecture of fugues late into the evening. It’s only been since Saturday that I haven’t even touched a computer, but everything feels different already.  I wake up with yoga and zazen and then baking or reading. I bought a book on the geology of Washington state and I read it on the patio drinking tea overlooking the Kachess range and Kachess lake with the snowy Cascade ranges visible through a cleft to the west. Not  having to go to work, not having to maintain friendships, having an automated vacation responder on my email, with no one but my family around me, the dog for walks and the lake for swims, I feel freer than I have in months. As I was setting aside my rising baguette dough, already expanding into a perfectly smooth and luminous orb under the plastic wrap, my dad remarked that if I had just been freed from slavery, I would not have had time to do that. But I say, I just have been freed from slavery, and yes I do have the time, but more importantly, I finally have the heart to do it.