The last two months...

...have been pretty hectic and haven't offered me much time to bake, let alone blog about it. A week before Halloween, we embarked on a close-to-4-week-long post-retirement jaunt which took us from Amsterdam to Paris via a circuitous route (we hit Geneva, Cannes, Marseille and the Ardèche on the way) and allowed us to visit with family and friends as we never could when we were both working. We started with my in-laws and worked our way down and back up, meeting new friends, discovering along the way cousins whom we didn't even know we had a few months back and tightening up lifelong ties with former neighbors as well as with childhood schoolmates. What a unique and joyful experience! When we finally flew back a week before Thanksgiving, we didn't go home but straight to the Pacific Northwest where we'll be relocating early next year and where we spent the last three weeks trying to put together a budget and a timeline for renovating the house we just bought. We are staying with one of our sons and his family and even though my friends at Tree-Top Baking kindly brought me some of their levain and my daughter-in-law couldn't be more gracious about sharing her kitchen and her oven, the truth of the matter is that it isn't really possible to make artisan bread regularly when you are out and about all the time. All this goes to explain why this blog has been mute since early October. I'll do my best to catch up but more upheavals are in the works: while we are flying back East tomorrow, we'll be hitting the road next week (weather-permitting) to go and spend the holidays in the Midwest with yet another one of our kids and his family. So bread-baking opportunities will alas remain few and far-between for the foreseeable future. In October though, before we left the US, I met with a most interesting and talented young baker whom I'll be blogging about as soon as I can put the story together and in France, I spent 24 hours with a jam-maker extraordinaire who, using the pear and chestnuts from her farm, showed me how to make a delicate "confit' that would be a delicious addition to any holiday table, especially in the company of a buttery brioche. So please stay tuned!