Bread

My sister is a baker. A real life baking bread for a living baker. She bakes the kind of artisan bread that will change your life. It's dense and full of flavor and so pretty it's really a tough decision whether you should eat it or just stare at it. She's mere days away from opening a cafe and bakery is Blue Mounds Wisconsin, The Naked Elm. Anyone within about 200 miles of there should make a trip over and get some bread.
The point is that my sister is a baker. I know what a baker is. I am a hack.
Yesterday we ran out of bread so this morning I mixed up a batch of dough that is rising. It's five cups of flour, 1 3/4 cups of water, 2ish teaspoons of salt, 2ish tablespoons of olive oil, some honey, and a bit of yeast. I'm not being purposely vague, that's the recipe I used this morning. Usually I use 3 cups of white flour and 2 cups of whole wheat but I only had about 2 2/3 cups of white so I had to use a bit more wheat. I slapped it together, kneaded it for 5 minutes and it's rising. I've made enough bread to be able to tell that my dough was a little dry buy it will still make an ok loaf.
If I'm such a hack and don't bother to use a recipe or even to measure most of my ingredients properly then why bother? Two reasons:
1. Homemade bread is better.
2. It's hard core.
Homemade bread really is better. Even my kids think so. In fact just yesterday they asked if I could make my orange rye bread this time. When do a bunch of kids ask for rye bread? What sort of alternate universe is this? Unfortunately I don't have any orange juice right now so they're getting regular bread. Sometimes daddy doesn't deliver.
Making bread really is a hard core domestic practice though. Bread has a sort of other world mysticism about it. Turning flour, salt, water and yeast into bread. Magic ratios. Secret techniques. Incredible smells. Everyone knows about it but almost nobody does it. It's a shame really, it's so easy.
Preparing food is going to be a central theme of my blog. I think it's the essential domestic art. Whether you have kids at home or not, nothing says that you are taking care of the person out working like having a hot meal ready for them when they get home.  Doing it well just takes practice and you get to practice every day. Your family will have better food at a cost that is a fraction of going out.
Twice a week I plan on putting up a recipe that I use. Sometimes it will be dinner, sometimes baked goods, sometimes weird things like homemade yogurt and sauerkraut.  
Preparation of food is the central domestic art, I practice it every day and I hope to never stop getting better at it.
I do have a secret for baking my bread that I'll share soon. Some bread pans have a non-stick coating. My bread pan is coated in.........magic!