Jorpblog

I got a new camera for our upcoming trip to Morocco (where people don’t like to be photographed). It’s a little bit smaller than my old one, and a hell’ve a lot better. This picture of Lenny was just a test photo in low light with the flash off. I like the blurriness–its sort of impressionistic.

Here’s the latest–sourdough sunflower wheat bread. I’ve been doing the sourdough bread just about every week for over 4 months now, and I am finally getting to the point where I feel comfortable experimenting. This one has a lot of sunflower seeds, and more whole wheat flour than white.

My bread bible is Bake Your Own Bread by Floss and Stan Dworkin. It’s one of those 70’s DIY books, which Sara and I both love, that teach you important lessons, like how to grow avocados in your house without having to do that stupid trick of impaling the seed with toothpicks and floating it over a juice glass. Anyway, I’ve only made the sourdough recipes so far, but I highly recommend it for anyone thinking about baking bread. It’s an extremely rewarding experience.

It’s been so long since I’ve blogged, and I feel like the bar has been rising with each passing day. The pressure is increasingly great to write something worth reading, to the point where I feel like the monk who, after taking a vow of silence, is invited to speak a single utterance after seven years of silence. Talk about anticipation!

I don’t flatter myself with this comparison–I know that I am writing this for myself, and only hope that anyone that cares to read it will be entertained or have an interesting thought or two along the way. I know too that the medium of blogging, with its low barrier to entry and ease and speed of distribution, is not well suited for the perfectionist. Basically, if you’ve got a blog, and you’ve got something to say–say it and move on! In other words: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I read two blogs regularly: Malcolm Gladwell’s and Travis’s T-Blog. It suprises me every time that Gladwell posts a blog with typos and misspellings. But I’m not surprised anymore when he makes a well-argued point only to be out-argued (though usually not out-styled) by a horde of fanatical commenters. And as for the News from the T, it is consistently, addictively worth reading…though lately there haven’t been nearly enough food shots, even cutting some slack for the injuries.

And with that in mind, I intend to post some photos of my latest hobby–baking bread. I am getting to be a pretty fine baker, but somewhat less of a food photographer. I love looking at pictures of food, reading cookbooks, and especially watching people cook and eat in movies. When Bobby Bacala sheds a tear while eating his wife’s baked ziti–the last ziti she ever made–I shed a tear along with him. When starving Japanese peasants devour a bowl of rice in an Akira Kurosawa movie, I reach for a towel to wipe up the saliva.

So hopefully there will be more food photos and more blogging in general coming to this space soon. Seven years is a long time to wait just for some pictures of bread.