I just started making bread. Real bread using my basic recipe. I hate to admit this, but it’s the first time I have done so since getting the new oven. Oh, I’ve been making bread. Not as regularly as I was before, and all of it has been quick breads and pan breads and other less fussy flour-based bread-like items. Some of them failed, and it destroyed my bread-making confidence. I didn’t want to make my real bread recipe with the new oven and have it fail too. Silly way to think, but what can I say? But I can’t avoid making bread forever unless I intend to start buying bread again, and I still hate store-bought bread.

It was nice standing in the late afternoon sunlight that streams into my kitchen with its golden glow and knead bread again. Sort of reminded me that it was never really about the bread. The bread was just a happy by-product of a process I enjoyed. I’m glad I finally decided today it was either go to the store and buy bread or make it, and that I decided to make it myself again. No matter what, I’m sure it will turn out edible. Even my failures were edible and tasty. I’ve never had a loaf of any kind of bread be a complete failure only suited for the trash can (yet).

It’s in the oven for its first rise right now, and everything seems to be going according to plan. With luck and good risings, we’ll have some nice sandwiches tonight for dinner.

I can’t wait until it gets to the baking part. I love the way the house smells when bread is baking … almost as much as I love eating freshly baked bread!