Tag: lifestyle

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on the menu: brioche by hand

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Brioche turns out to be a little laborious. And almost half butter.

Lacking a stand mixer, I mixed the batch by hand (which I truly cannot recommend [I have a blister!]). Many hours of waiting for dough to rise (with winter reluctance), and giving dough the smackdown, and waiting some more, and putting it in a bread pan, waiting some more. Actually not a bad way to give structure to a day, if structure is lacking; I don’t know what I would have accomplished* today if not for this brioche.

*but ‘accomplish’ is such an ugly word, anyway.

It looks pretty much the thing:

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Do you know what this means?

It means I made bread today.

Edible bread.

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Why did I make brioche?

I really couldn’t tell you.

I find that baking can be mysterious in this way. And one has got to do something, after all.

 

I used the recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours.

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reading: Nabokov, Adler, Forster, Kakuzo…

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Between Meals, A.J. Liebling – I like reading gastronomes, particularly the French ones, and the ones partial to French cuisine. Want to read the Greek and Roman ones, too.

The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzo – How lovely is this binding?

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita is the kind of favorite that makes me want to read everything Nabokov has written. So, working on that. So far, so good.

Pitch Dark, Renata Adler – Renata Adler writes directly for me, it seems. Directly for my species of consciousness. I felt this with Speedboat as well. Find her so inspiring as a writer.

Howards End, E.M. Forster – many lovely passages, thanks to CPL for recommending.

Swann’s Way, Proust – still (savoring, not that there is any danger of running out of text for the next several years)