Thirty-Something

RTP now has 30 followers. Welcome to the latest few and brave little Kelsey who stepped up to the line to become #30. Welcome!!

Kelsey is training for her first marathon and will race for 26.2 this coming January here in Phoenix at the RnR. I'm looking forward to reading about your training Kelsey and hopefully you will be joining the rest of us Phx-based blogging/running nerds for a pre-race orgy meet up.

I read 52 Loaves last week and have been busy building a levain, researching recipes, and emailing the author. Not too much running, but a really nice swim session with Runlaur and..........

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Bikram Yoga this evening with Adam and Runalur!! I'm very excited, but also apprehensive because I have heard some horror stories from people about their first experience with 'hotroom' yoga. But as they say in Hell and Bakersfield, 'everyone into the fire'. I'll report out in the next day or so pending survival.

52 Loaves, by William Alexander, is a chronological self-rising journey of one year in the life of an amateur turned-pro-bread-maker and his family. If you have read anything by Alexander, you know he is anything but amateur in what ever he pursues. The author seeks to recreate the perfect bread and vows to bake at least one loaf per week for one year in pursuit of the pain de perfect. He describes the processes for making yeast and also the chemical reactions in each stage. He travels to France, North Africa, and to production-grade flour mills to better understand and perfect the craft. Hard to believe, but he actually plants a small plot of wheat in his garden and , a year later, harvests, threshes, winnows, and grinds (some by hand) the grain to make flour which he uses to make some kick-ass bread. In the final stages of his journey, he spends several weeks living in an abbey in France teaching the monks how to bake bread and revitalizing their tradition of bread-making and also has a profound and lasting spiritual experience.

I have taken his lead and am now in the final day of a six day process to build a levain (starter dough) that can be used to bake some of the best breads on the planet. There are plenty of informative websites and blogs for this topic, and I fear that I may have left my family behind. No worries from them, as I have promised home-made breads and muffins starting sometime in the next week, and food always trumps in this family. I needed some information about the levain and some other baking topics, so I emailed the author, and he replied with two separate emails within a day. Not to be too self-assured, but I knew he would. He just seems like that kind of guy.

52 Loves gets an overall RTP rating of 'Cake'. I'll have to increase my mileage, or I'll get an overall rating of cake-eater. 30 suckers followers. Who knew??