I wrote this on November 8th and didn't publish it

I feel that it would be best for me to leave.

I feel that she gives me no reason to stay.

1986.

24 years.

It’s a long time.

.

I baked bread for the card game. I thought it was a good loaf but it wasn’t my best. I felt that the flavor was a little muted but then I was fighting a cold; the problem could have been with my taste buds.

Everyone else said that the bread was great.

“Why don’t you sell this?” or “You could do this for a living,” usually follows after people find out some of my talents.

The reason I don’t is because the moment that you take money for something there is a contract to perform and when I “have to” do something, I no longer enjoy it.

I’ve also had my own business for awhile and the convenience and the benefits didn’t outweigh the hassles and headaches.

And you can’t bake professionally from your home kitchen, not in the City of Boston, anyway.

“Oh, you beat the rest of us at poker. Why don’t you play poker professionally?”

Isn’t that a ridiculous question?

The bread was an addition to what I had promised to bring, I brought it to show off and also to share some very good bread.

Very good bread is a great thing. If you think that bread is bread, you are ignorant. If you don’t like bread, absent of any medical conditions, then you lack a good bit of soul.

I actually share bread mostly so others get to experience it and not so much to show off because I always let people know that the ingredients are just flour, water, yeast and salt and that I bake it in just a regular oven. Although, there is also barley malt in the dough and my oven is tricked out with baking tiles and a cast iron pan that I use to create steam.

But, I think that it’s basically simple. It just takes time and attention and both are rather forgiving. A lot of good bread baking is just waiting for the yeast to do its thing.

One of the guys started taking about how his wife and daughters will sometimes purchase premade bread dough and place two loaves worth together to make one big loaf and that there are tricks to get the bread to rise quickly.

“So, you’re giving me bread baking advice?” is what I thought but what I said was, “With good bread, you don’t want a quick rise.”

His reply was, “Oh.”

I doubt that he knows what good bread is.