What you are witnessing here, folks, would be what they call “getting back on the horse.”
After the smoke, the blackened loaves, the almost-blazing defeat that was my attempt to make ciabatta last week, I’d begun doubting my quest to bake my way through Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice along with 200 plus amateur bakers around the world.
Could I really pull this off? (Without burning down my apartment, preferably.)
Should I even try?
But love can be a powerful motivator. In this case, that would be Mike’s profound love for cinnamon buns.
Since I joined the bread bakers’ challenge in May, Mike had been waiting impatiently for cinnamon bun week. And by the time cinnamon buns came up, I had begun to see a greater purpose to baking them — I thought they might help assuage my lingering guilt over a not-so-little visit I made to Stella McCartney in Paris recently. (Hey, 50%-off is pretty good, even in Euros.)
So I grabbed my saddle and called for my horse.