Journal Entry, 6 November 2021

 

As I’m accustomed to living without centralized heat, it is natural to heat a room at a time. So this morning after mixing a batch of bread dough, which was leavened (mostly) with a piece of old dough, I placed it next to a burner on the stove which was set on the lowest setting and a flame barley visible. Then after going to a coffee shop and arriving home and taking a nap (I love naps) and going out again to the grocer for ingredients for dinner and then arriving home again, the house was filled with the sweet yeasty aroma of rising bread and the kitchen window was fogged over. And for just a brief moment it brought me back to my youth; to the east side projects and coming to the same aroma with windows fogged over and rosy cheeks from playing in the snow all day. And there’d be a bowl of bread or kuchen or kuechle dough which my mother had rising on the radiator. Sometimes—often—I view those days through Rockwellian rose-colored glasses, and that is okay.