Every loaf of bread I have ever made looks to me like an absolute, not even kidding miracle. I am delighted after each rise. Pleased and still a little apprehensive when shaping the loaves. Hopeful and eager as they bake. And then, steaming and cooling on a rack on my table, I can't help but grin. Bread. There is bread and I have made it. Every loaf produces all these feelings. Every burnished loaf is like tangible, edible hope: I will eat; I can do difficult things; I can make things that are beautiful; I have not lost my capacity for delight.
Every completed loaf produces a set of feelings very like those that well up every time I listen to the opening bit of the first movement of Mozart's 7th symphony: Both can pull joy from deep within me even when I am convinced that the world and everything in it is irredeemably terrible.
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