In which I become a baker

I've always wished I was a baker.  It seemed mysterious and crazy to me that you could just bake bread, any time you felt like it.  My mom made a lot of tortillas and a lot of biscuits, and on very special occasions yeasty dinner rolls and even sometimes homemade donuts.  The donuts had grated potato in them.  I haven't had anything like them since.

Many times have I tried to bake good bread, and many times have I failed.  A lot of the flops were still tasty and still eaten, but it apparently took me ten years of grown-up life to figure out that bread flour was really good for baking bread!  Anyway, I just turned 30 and now I am a real grown-up and I bake real bread. 

 I make a lot of messes along the way too.  That bread flour is really excitable.  My favorite bread so far has lots of garlic and thyme worked into the dough...it smells like pizza crust while it bakes. 

 Since Roxie asked, weather in Southern California is sunny, t-shirt weather, cooling down in the evenings with a strong chance of chickens, cape honeysuckle, and angel's trumpets. 

Off in the distance, behind the pretty flowers (I almost typed flours, bread on the brain) is my looming pile of junk to take to the dump. Our home renovations are piling up, even though I'm trying to reuse and recycle as much of it as possible.