Slightly used....

[McDuff]

Hi Chef Peter---I talked my way into auditing a class of yours a few years ago after you were on The Connection with Chris Lydon, and then ran into you at graduation in 2000. I was building an Alan Scott oven and asked you to come to the first firing but you were too involved with American Pie. Well, I finished it, and it works, but even though my bread passion has not abated, I don't use it much. It just sits in the back yard taking up real estate. It's quite capable of putting out as many pizzas as you feel like making, as long you occasionally rake some hot coals over the hearth for a bit. I've always been too impatient to let it cool off enough to bake some fabulous bread, but the last time I fired it I got some great looking stuff that I made from the C&C focaccia formula. I always use that for ciabatta.

I did have a chance in the spring to work with a guy named Ron Ullman in Smithfield RI one Sunday morning helping him with his bake. He brought a bunch of samples into the Whole Foods where I work and we're thinking of bringing his stuff in. A semolina fennel raisin bread was particularly toothsome.

I just spent a week in London and saw some great looking bread. Way different than what you see in a grocery store in the States. I was attracted to the bread made by St John Bread and Wine in Spitalfield and wangled an invite to help the evening guy for an hour or so.

I don't know that I have a specific question. It seems that the more I know about bread, the less I know. Been trying the turning technique when I bake at home. Made a mother lode of Neo-Neopolitan pizza for a party for my daughter, by hand instead of the univex and it came out great.

Bakers seem to live large...you enjoy being in the universe, apparently. Calise was a barrel of laughs, Ullman is truly an iconoclast and this guy Christophe at St John was fun for the two hours I spent with him. I guess that's my question. Why do you suppose that is? I always have looked on my now 30 year career of feeding people and making things for them as nourishing both them and me. Nothing I like better than saying..."You're welcome."

[Peter Reinhart]

Great letter! Wish I could take that oven off your hands but we just settled in down here and aren't ready yet. But your main point is very important--bakers tend to be soulful lot, whether or not they are religious in the conventional sense. Why--well I guess that's really what all my books are about, trying to zero in on that. There's no short answer, only to say, look at the symbolism. It gets into you one way or the other and yes, probably everyone on this site would agree how satisfying it is putting food into another person and having them like it. What a rush, eh?