Nerd

 

Half a year before, I had never heard of the word "proofing basket" (and neither of its German translation) and now I own several different varieties of those and have perfected both the recipe for dark bread, as pictured here, and for French baguette (thanks to the Empress sharing her killer recipe with me). Oh, and I also own a baguette baking tray, FYI. Half a year ago as the peak of global lockdown bread baking had already been reached I was still in the "nah, I don't even eat that much bread, it's not worth the time and effort to even look into that sourdough business" field. Now I still don't actually eat that much bread myself, but it takes a lot of self-restraint not to bake some variety of bread every single day. Highflyer is a more than willing guinea-pig of my efforts and thus very supotive of my current passion. I have also amassed an impressive array of bread-baking related gadgets and bought different varieties of flour. What happened?

For once, my previous crafty outlet, sewing fabric masks in all types of patterns has become obsolete due to the fact that in our country, you are currently only allowed to wear FFP2-type masks in public and there is no use for those masks at the moment, i.e. nobody would appreciate getting them. I could of course venture out into sewing proper clothes more, but I am an impatient instant-gratification type of person who gets a kick out of projects that can be done pretty quickly. Okay, sourdough bread is not exactly fast-food, but the different steps it takes are quick as such.

Another reason is that home office is starting to lose its appeal a bit or rather, sitting in front of your laptop for hours on end is more frustrating when days are shorter and you can't balance it out with many outside activities during daylight hours. I am thus very happy that days are getting longer and meeting friends outside won't have you frozen semi-stiff after a couple of hours, but can take the shape of sitting outside a café or in your garden. One can dream.

Until then, I shall be nerding it out and giving fancy bakeries a run for their money.