While on vacation last week I read "The Man Who Ate Everything" by the venerable Mr. Jeffrey Steingarten, longstanding food critic for Vogue magazine (and occasional Iron Chef America judge). He devotes the entire first chapter to an 11 month period in his life when he was obsessed with baking le pain au levain naturel, a naturally leavened bread from France. And I mean obsessed - every week or two he would have giant 50lb bags of freshly milled flour shipped from California to his New York City apartment just for making bread.
Anyway, according to Jeffrey (yes, we're on a first-name basis now), there are two kinds of people in the world: those who can survive happily on bread alone, and those who also require meat, vegetables, and dairy. I used to think I would be placed firmly in the latter group, but now that I've started baking my own bread, I think I might belong in the former.
