亚洲二区在线视频_欧美国产三级_中国一级毛片_久久久亚洲综合_国产精品一二三区_www伊人

Book Details Quest to Bake Perfect Loaf of Bread

Author travels to Europe and Africa during year-long odyssey

Faiza Elmasry | Washington, DC 16 July 2010

 
Photo: Photos.com
William Alexander details his year-long quest to bake the perfect loaf of bread in his book, '52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning and a Perfect Crust.'

 

Few things in life are as simple or complex as bread.

The same four essential ingredients - flour, water, yeast and salt - can yield 10,000 different combinations.

That's what author William Alexander discovered when he embarked on a year-long odyssey to re-create the perfect loaf of peasant bread. In the process, he says, he learned an important lesson about baking and life.

For most of his life, William Alexander didn't really care much about bread.

"As a kid I never liked bread," he says. "I grew up in the 1950 and 1960s with this horrible cellophane-wrapped pre-sliced white bread. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I tasted real bread. I never knew bread could be this good; the crust was this dark brown, sweet crust that turned chewy in your mouth. And the crumbs, rather than being like dense and mushy like white bread, it was this open-celled, almost honey-combed crumb. It just had a wonderful yeasty smell, just a delicious flavor."

 
Courtesy williamalexander.com
Author William Alexander baked bread with Arab women in Morocco and monks in France.

Alexander, who had never baked before, says he knew the only way to have this kind of bread again was to learn how to make it himself. He started, literally, from the ground up.

"I planted my own wheat and harvested and threshed and winnowed and ground that wheat into flour," he says. "I even built a hole in my backyard, took mud that came out of that hole and made a clay oven to bake the bread."

Alexander baked a loaf every week for a year. He says it was an exciting learning experience.

"What happened was with each failed loaf, a new questions arose. When the bread didn't rise, I started wondering what yeast was so I went to visit a yeast factory."

Alexander chronicles those experiences in his book, "52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning and a Perfect Crust."

 
Courtesy williamalexander.com

"I wanted to go to a place where bread mattered to people," he says. "There had recently been riots in Morocco due to the cost of wheat going up, so I traveled there to bake alongside Arab women in a large village oven. It was the largest oven I'd ever seen. They all brought their own bread there. They would put a mark on it so they would know their family's bread and leave it with the baker. Then they would come back later in the day."

In the course of his bread quest, Alexander won second place in the New York State Fair bread competition. He enrolled in a bread-making seminar in Paris, and spent a few days at an abbey in Normandy, France, where he taught the monks how to make the traditional abbey bread.

"That was about 3 quarters into my year of baking," he adds. "When I found a medieval abbey in France that said they had been baking for 1300 years, but had lost the last monk who knew how to bake bread, I volunteered to come over and bake some bread for them. They came back and said, 'Sure, that sounds like a good idea, but could you train a monk to bake while you are here?' I suddenly realized I was in this absurd situation: I am an amateur baker, I hadn't been in a church in years, I barely speak French, and found myself going over to try to restore the lost 1300-year-old tradition of baking at the abbey."

When Alexander's year long bread making adventure came to its end, he realized that the perfect loaf of bread he was after was whatever loaf he was baking at the time.

This was not Alexander's only attempt to produce his own food. In his previous book, "The $64 Tomato," he chronicled the joys and frustrations of growing his own vegetables.

"If you put me to the test and said, 'Choose one reason why you garden and why you bake,' it's for the food," he says. "I mean anyone with a little effort can make better food and even cheaper food, but mainly better food than you can buy anywhere. You can bake the best loaf of bread you have ever tasted, and you can do it, if not your first try, then your second or third try. It's healthy food. You know exactly what's going into it."

That's the message Alexander hopes readers will take away from his books. He encourages people to get involved with their food, whether it's fruits and vegetables or a loaf of peasant bread.

 


文章來(lái)源于網(wǎng)絡(luò),如有侵權(quán)請(qǐng)聯(lián)系我們,將會(huì)在第一時(shí)間處理
更多資訊可以關(guān)注微信公眾號(hào):IELTSIM。
[AD] 點(diǎn)擊此處了解【雅思合集】【學(xué)習(xí)計(jì)劃定制】【終生VIP服務(wù)】
EU Offers Words of Support to Greece
主站蜘蛛池模板: 一级黄色片子看看 | 国产天天操天天干 | 国产精品乱码一区二区三区 | 日韩在线视频免费观看 | 九九小视频| 毛片91 | 99福利视频| 青青久在线视频免费观看 | 91久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 | 国产婷婷色一区二区三区 | 成年入口无限观看网站 | 欧美日韩国产欧美 | 久久精品播放 | 野狼在线社区2017入口 | 日本不卡一区二区 | 五月婷婷亚洲综合 | 欧美精品一区视频 | 亚洲三级在线播放 | 久久国产精品亚州精品毛片 | 欧美 日韩 国产 一区 | 九九久久免费视频 | 999精品在线 | 国产性一级片 | 日本欧美中文字幕 | 午夜视频免费 | 久久1区2区3区| 天堂√在线观看一区二区 | av男人的天堂网 | 伊人久久综合 | avmans最新导航地址 | 色5月婷婷丁香六月 | 一区二区三区四区精品 | 日韩午夜影院 | 亚洲视频一区在线播放 | 国产精品视频免费观看 | 精品亚洲一区二区三区 | 久久免费精品 | 精品国产不卡一区二区三区 | 久久久久国产视频 | 欧洲免费av | 色综合久久久久 |