I begin to understand

When poets waxed lyrical about the glories of well baked bread, they had to be talking about a rare and uncommon thing.  I have thermometers and a temperature controled oven and every modern convenience, and I'm still stuggling with this bread-baking thing.  Especially that second rise.  (But I gotta tell you, this dense bread is really yummy!)  What blows me away is that our foremothers, for millenia, did all their baking in a wood-fired oven with no thermostat.  How did they know when it was hot enough?  How did they keep it hot enough?  No wonder there's all this har-de-har about new brides not being able to turn out a decent meal.  This is the sort of thing that would takes years of practice.  My Norwegian grandmother was cook for a logging camp, and fed thirty men with what she cooked on a wood stove.  I am not fit to wash her pots and pans.

Bread baking has been a humbling experience so far, but I'm not done yet by any means!!

I am, however gaining back the weight I fought to lose.  Homemade bead, even indifferent home-made bread, is delicious!!