Micro-Bakery: Jan. 14

The first week of micro-baking in 2012 was a resounding success in my estimation. Still doing twelve loaves a week (one for myself), trying to commit to a healthy variety of breads, and still happily bike-delivering loaves around Durham.

I intended to make an Herbs de Provence Levain this week, but got started a little late on my hunt for fresh herbs. Thankfully, my neighbors across the street (who are LMB subscribers) have a great herb garden, and let me harvest their herbs for my bread (thanks neighbors!). The rosemary bush in their front yard is an incredible variety, huge, with bright, thick needles, sweating with fragrance (see picture below). As rosemary was most prolific, rosemary features most prominently in the bread, but I also added a some fresh oregano, fresh thyme, and a hint of fresh lavender. It may not be a balanced Herbs de Provence, but it's a delicious herb blend all the same.

Saturday, just as I was getting on my bike to deliver, the sun hit its peak warmth for the day. It was a beautiful ride, and brought one of E.E. Cummings' poems to mind. Actually, the first line of this poem is a prayer I whisper many days when I step out and discover the world bright and crackling with life. Here's Cummings' poem in its entirety:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)