I’ve written before about my disconcerting devotion to jamón, but there is one thing in Spain that I may love even more. And sorry, Sergio Garcia, it is not you. Really, it’s not a concrete object, but a pleasure that is happily as everyday as it is simple: fresh baked bread.
There are breads that I miss from the US, like soft multigrain bread and the rosemary sea salt bread that is one of the best things of living around Seattle. I’m still flip-flopping bread brands to solve the first dilemma and perhaps I will get the guts to try my hand at yeast breads in order to kill the second craving. At least until transporters and replicators fall into my price range.
But it’s ok. Because more than the act of eating bread (of which I am a professional), Spain has captured my heart by putting fresh bread in every ubiquitous mini supermarket, which means that popping into Lidl to buy super cheap Red Bull knockoffs is an opportunity to receive a warm scent-hug of yeasty goodness.
Technically, our apartment is on a rather severe diet that forbids bread. But after only a week, my roommates discovered that Desa on a that diet is a vicious little monster, and bread has come back into my life. But the ease of getting good bread here can actually be kind of dangerous. The other day we stopped to pick up tomatoes for a salad and they had just finished baking up bread for the dinner shoppers. The smell physically enveloped us, these dusky gold baguettes with pale underbellies, crunching softly in promise, still damp from the steam of baking, like the whisper of a lover.
We stared at the bread. We stared at each other. We left with four loaves.
I cannot count the times that Rosa and I have run in the door of the apartment with bread shouting feel it! Feel it! I am privileged to live with someone who is equally excited when the bread makes it home still hot and crunchy. And in a greater stroke of luck, we celebrate this shared passion every Friday morning, with “un señor desayuno”, or a grand breakfast in the Spanish style.
This is an andaluza. They as a Spanish half-baguette and I love them.
