Spent this morning in the kitchen, doing three things.

A new batch of peanut butter cookies.

• Hypothesis: They’ll be as good or better, made with peanuts finely chopped in my fine chopper instead of peanuts.
• Method: Follow recipe, but substitute 265 gm finely chopped salted peanuts for 265 gm peanut butter.
• Results: They are as good, or better.
• Methodological flaws: Judgement based on memory rather than simultaneous double-blind assessment.
• However: Two relatively independent judges concur fully.

Two starters and but a single loaf.

• Hypothesis: There’s no difference between my home-made ??-year-old sourdough starter and the Tuscan centenarian I was entrusted with some time ago.
• Method (for 1st experiment): Use identical amounts of each starter to bake the standard loaf as suggested by the suppliers of the Tuscan pasta madre.
• Results: The two bigas (or should that be bige?) look and smell identical. More tomorrow.
• Methodological flaws: The Tuscan starters begins life stiffer (75%) than my own (100%), and this time contained a couple of flax seeds left over from the last bake.
• However: Get real.

Fermented cabbage can repeat.

• Hypothesis: Last month’s sauerkraut was not a one-hit wonder.
• Method: Do it again.
• Results: For now, the jar is packed. Come back in about three weeks.
• Methodological flaws: This time I added caraway seeds and peppercorns, and I left out the red cabbage. I also severely misjudged the amount of cabbage needed, so the jar is only half full.
• However: Maybe none of that will matter.

"When Hana enters the small bakery I have borrowed for a day, I am dividing a loaf into 1.5-centimeter slices. The loaf's tranches articulate a white fanned deck, each one the exact counterpart of its fellows. The bread is smooth and uniform, like a Bauhaus office block. There are no unneeded flourishes or swags. Each symmetrical slice shines so white it is almost blue. This is a work of modern art. My ten-year-old daughter does not pause to say hello. She rushes to the cutting board, aghast, and blurts, "Its fake!" Then she devours a piece in three bites, and asks for more."

Wonderful piece of writing, about a subject that … well, go and look.

Original article: The Believer - Atomic Bread Baking at Home

Very pretty video; not exactly technique, or a recipe; just a hymn -- or, given the date, a lovesong -- to making your own bread.

You can follow someone on Twitter and friend them on Facebook, but real friends are people you break bread with.

Got that?

David Carr, in a piece for the New York Times, related eating bread baked by Clay Shirky, a web hero of considerable renown. It came as a surprise to Mr Carr (as it did to me) that Clay Shirky is a baker. His bread "was warm on the inside, crusty on the outside, little French loaves of goodness," which also seemed a surprise and noteworthy to Mr Carr (although not to me; you serve your own bread at a meal because you know it is good).

Mr Carr used the occasion to ruminate on the nature of friendships and social ties, the differences between cyberfriends and "real" friends, and the ways in which one can become the other, changing the nature of the relationship profoundly. (As an aside, the news that Shirky is a baker seems to have outed other bakers, and made them known to one another, which is nice.) What pleased me most about the encounter is not that David Carr discovered the difference between real people and cyber people, but that he discovered the difference between real bread and rubbish, to the extent that he pestered Mr Shirky (online) for the recipe and shared (photos of) the results with his new friends (also online).

I don't really care whether he keeps baking or not. I'm glad Carr made those "lumpy but fundamentally sound" loaves at least once. Making bread and sharing it with friends and loved ones is one of the most rewarding things a person can do.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a 40% light rye sourdough to remove from the oven.

Lotteries, raffles and the like are not generally my friends. But last night, I was lucky enough to win not one but two Regency Wraps reusable parchment sheets, which unlike other reusable baking sheets can be cut to size. This happens so seldom I just had to share my good fortune. There will be a longish delay before I can report on whether they are as good as they’re cracked up to be, because I have to collect them from across the Atlantic, but I can wait. Can you?