BREAD!

I love you guys! All you bloggy/twittery folks who live in my phone. I love the interaction, the openness, the sense of belonging.

I love how every now and then you throw me a curve ball.

Like this one: At the weekend, you all turned a 21 second video of me stretching and folding a 2kg piece of bread dough into pornography!

I admit that making bread is a sensual pleasure for me; I love how the flour, water, yeast and salt develop from a formless, shaggy mass into a silky, elastic dough that feels full of life in my hands. It’s a relaxation, a de-stress for me, the familiar, repetitive motion draining the stress away and leaving me feeling calm and relaxed.

I like that, when I’m working with bread, I can feel the strength of my hands and my arms, the way I have to use just enough of that strength to master the dough but not so much that I damage it; I like how connected I feel to it, my action met by its reaction, that sense of the dough responding to my touch; I like especially that I can allow myself to enjoy my own competence as I deftly knead and stretch and fold and shape.

I guess I’ve just never thought of it as a spectator sport before.

This tweet, one of a sequence of four little videos, really took off. It’s been looked at 1,600 times! The comments included a couple on technique and ingredients, but most were the type of responses I might hope for from a more overtly sexual post. “Mnfff” said one reader; “Sexiest tweet of the day” said another.

Go on then.
Have another one.
“Stretch and fold”. pic.twitter.com/95NcUfqUwl

— Bibulous One (@BibulousOne) 22 December 2018

It was fun.

It was fun to have this response to something I’ve spent years learning how to do, to be rewarded for that; but, more, it was fun to trigger a series of flirty, light-hearted interactions with the people of kinky twitter with something so obviously un-kinky!

Doing so has strengthened the feeling that BibulousOne is no longer an artificial persona I’ve created for people who share my sexual peccadilloes. This is me on here: not only a kinky hedonist who spends his bit of spare cash on hot exploits with sex workers, but also a committed foodie, a concerned father, a son of ageing parents and, yes, a baker of bread.

I love that.

An epi loaf.

I’ve been making bread for over ten years, having my own live sourdough culture for much of that time. I used to make a dozen loaves for local friends on a Saturday morning, charging a full price but saving everything I earned for a small charity my wife is connected with. I used to plan out each bake, researching a particular loaf from a famous baker, and then trying to recreate it at home. I once had a quite successful attempt to recreate the most famous bread of them all, the Pain Poilâne from the Poilâne bakery in Paris, which is sent all round the world to bready aficionados. It took 2 days of slow fermentation to develop the flavour I wanted, but it was worth it in the end.

My version of pain Poilâne

I love the huge variety of it all. I make slow fermented sourdoughs, crunchy granaries, airy baguettes. I pride myself on my Italian breads; a focaccia with a salty, garlicky, rosemary crust, or the lightest of ciabatta, superb as a sandwich with smoked salmon and cream cheese.

A floury ciabatta

I have a bready twitter account, which is largely unused now, but used to have over 500 followers. Perhaps I should re-start it.

I’m re-organising my work life in the new year, to make a bit more time for myself. If any UK types would like to spend a day combining some bread making with good coffee and the most broad-minded of chat, just slide into my DM’s on Twitter or drop a comment below.

the end of the process, two 1kg sourdough loaves