Baguette

The Cathedral of Bred.

I forgot the salt again. That is the most idiotic novice mistake that I've made five hundred times. Bread without salt is the worst. Adding it by the slice works but, eh. 

I used a large wide angle lens that is difficult to manage. It's like a giant glass eye. You can get within an inch or two, but the closer you get the more fisheye distortion occurs, but the good kind that can work artistically. It is a tricky lens and it is heavy. It is fixed low on a sturdy tripod. My leg cramped whilst holding a ridiculous position that for modesty must not be attempted in public, and boy, did it cramp for a long long LONG time. Walking it off didn't help. Then the pain finally went away. Then it came back and the same thing all over again. Then it went away again. Then it came back and the same torture all over again, so three times I suffered insanely with a leg that I wanted to chop off. 

How I suffer for ARTS !

A couple of people I know met at the new Clifford Still museum right across the street for the opening of the new building. 

Short version: American artist makes good. Sells very little, though. Keeps a lot. Large canvases. Zig-zaggy patches you think your kids could do. While alive, insists his collection of his own work must not be dispersed. Art must stay together, generally, so the psychology goes. He would be open to a city that would build a museum to house his collection so that it could stay together. Like a family, I am imagining. One painting was sold and paid for the whole building. 

See? Now that sort of thing takes connections.

But now aren't you left with the ache that one child was sold for the family to stay together? Once you see the art you might decide it is best dispersed. Then again, maybe it is good to keep stuff like that in one place. 

Back to today, that broke up and one of the friends wandered over to my place as I was finishing taking these shots so we ate this bread immediately with olive oil and we spilled out a little salt. So that was dinner.  Or lunch. Whatever. That was the only thing I had all day, and it was enough. 

There is all kind of stuff immediately available to go with the bread but the thought never occurred to either of us. 

The dough aged overnight. The whole thing. It was either a dense sponge or a loose dough. For once I actually kneaded the dough, but I did that with a dinner knife within the oversized bowl, and kept at it until it stretched. By morning it had grown, and foamed, and peaked and smelled faintly of alcohol. So whatever happens now, the bread will have character. 

Preheated a clay cloche for baguettes to rocket-hot. 

Turned out the dough. Stretched and folded the loose wet dough on a floured work surface. Covered. Proofed. Stretched one final time while lifting and fitting the dough into the heated cloche resulting in its final shape, a stretched appearance of being narrow in the middle. 

The photos above were culled from a photoset posted to Things Wot I Made Then Ate, here.