A Baguette's Progress

Today was a wonderful day! And that has nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that Amaretto+Melissa=Warmandfuzziness (and a liquor-painted blush)! (Although, it probably has something to do with exclamation point quantities...)

After waking up around eight-ish, I picked up the Melepad and then bought foodstuffs. Glorious foodstuffs to the accompaniment of my friendly butcher (who recognized me this time!). Turkey and ham and swiss and tomatoes and orange juice and eggs and turkey bacon and English muffins. Queenmob showed up at 12ish with donuts and I made English muffins with eggs and turkey bacon, tomatoes and swiss cheese under the broiler. Delicious. After showing off my new comix (I am a comic acolyte in the truest sense): Harold Sipe's Screamland and Alan Moore/Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls, we discussed Queenmob's own comic while I worked on the quandary of a baguette while working on cups of loose assam black tea and a Sharon van Etten playlist (lots of new music to follow in another post).

I make my own bread. But I have never made a baguette before. I cheated slightly by using my bread machine for the dough. The recipe was remarkably easy: high gluten flour, hot water, white sugar, kosher salt and yeast.

Music interlude ***~~******~~******~~******~~******~~******


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The finished product was surprisingly awesome - although a lack of a pastry brush made the yolk application a little awkward. And apparently I was supposed to cut perpendicular slashes rather than a crevasse down the center ;) The texture was dense and chewy - the way I love bread with a really nice flavor. The judicious application of Amaretto in my beloved Star Trek glasses (of course, I used Spock!) set the tone. The following are random shots of the baguette in its native environment:








And the orangey glow of my apartment is no fiction. Apparently when Mr. Smith was apartment sitting, the bulbs were mysteriously transplanted for orange party bulbs. I can't decide if I like it or not - but as I'm too short to reach the light and sufficiently lacking in a ladder - that is a moot issue altogether. As it lends a sort of hot-house, lady of easy virtue feel to the apartment, I'm not surprised I've been working mentally through Neruda of late:

Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo
y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callado,
no me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquicia,
busco el sonido líquido de tus pies en el día.

Estoy hambriento de tu risa resbalada,
de tus manos color de furioso granero,
tengo hambre de la pálida piedra de tus uñas,
quiero comer tu piel como una intacta almendra.

Quiero comer el rayo quemado en tu hermosura,
la nariz soberana del arrogante rostro,
quiero comer la sombra fugaz de tus pestañas

y hambriento vengo y voy olfateando el crepúsculo
buscándote, buscando tu corazón caliente
como un puma en la soledad de Quitratúe

Or in translation...

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.