Quotes

“Es mas largo que un dia sin pan.” “It’s longer than a day without bread.”  Mexican saying

“In other words,  I was in love with everything I did.  My heart did not beat,  it exploded.  I did not warm toward a subject, I boiled over.  I have always run fast and yelled loud about a list of great and magical things I knew I simply could not live without.”  Ray Bradbury

“I like to think that a loaf of bread in one’s hands is the result of a thousand factors that went into its making.  In a sense the bread always seems to be one micro step ahead of us, and our daily endeavor is to come to terms with as many of the subtleties as we can. Those who wish to conquer bread making, then, are sooner or later sure to be disillusioned. In fact, just befriending the bread is reward enough, and a much worthier aspiration.” Jeffrey Hamelman

“I am trying to check my habits of seeing,  to counter them for the sake of greater freshness.   I’m trying to be unfamiliar with what I’m doing.”  John Cage

“Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature”  Michael Pollan

“In the beginning of this record I tried to explore the nature of journeys, how they are things in themselves, each one an individual and no two alike.  I speculated with a kind of wonder on the strength of the individuality of journeys and stopped on the postulate that people don’t take trips-trips take people.  That discussion, however, did not go into the life span of journeys.  This seems to be variable and unpredictable.  Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns?  The reverse is also true:  many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.” John Steinbeck

“Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not thinking. ‘Childlikeness’ has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness.”    D.T. Suzuki

“I learned about slow rise by reading Julia Child, who learned it from chefs, who learned it from others before and before them. It is a principle, like a great cosmic law, that yields marvelous fruits when applied in conformity with other laws of baking and it is a principle that can, like all true principles, be transposed into the moral and ethical realms of politics, religion, work, and life in general. Slow rise is like saying ‘the Way,’  Tao,  or insha’ a  Allah.”    Peter Reinhart

“The religious and superstitious feeling attached to bread is stronger in some countries than others.  To some it is,  more than any other food,  a direct gift from God.  An invocation to God is murmured before kneading the dough,  another before placing it in the oven.  A hungry man will kiss a piece of bread  given to him as alms.  A piece of bread found lying on the ground is immediately picked up, kissed, and respectfully placed on a wall or a table.  At a gastronomic conference in Istanbul,  I will always remember the look of horror on the Turks’ faces when one of the foreign contributors placed a piece of bread under the leg of a wobbly table to steady it.  They all swooped to retrieve it.”   Claudia Roden

“Ambition without patience is a dangerous thing.”    “A Day at elBulli”     Ferran Adria, Juli Soler, Albert Adria

“Cooking well, too, doesn’t mean cooking fancy, it just means that anything you set your hands to makes good eating, be it mashed potatoes, chicken soup, meatballs, or a twelve-layer cake.” Julia Child

“When I cook with the wok,  I feel a connection in my soul to the long lineage of Chinese cooks before me.  I like the idea of cooking in the same kind of pan that was used thousands of years ago-when Chinese cooking was still in its infancy.  The thought that home cooks, not only in China but on every continent,  have woks similar to mine fills me with the pleasure of sustaining a long tradition.  I often remind myself that in the humblest homes in China, the wok is the only cooking pan in the kitchen.”  Grace Young

“There are many rituals and elements of etiquette connected with bread. In Tuscany and Puglia, big rounds of crusty rustic loaves are always held in the crook of the elbow and sliced toward the chest. Knowing how to cut bread is as important to an Italian man as learning to carve meat is to an American.” Carol Field

“The Latin phrase ‘cum panum,’  ‘with bread,’ is the root of the word ‘companion,’ meaning to break bread together.” Beth Hensperger

“In Mexico there is a popular saying: ‘Don’t make an important decision without first having eaten.’ Mexicans heed this advice. The breakfast ritual is observed in the family setting,  and also in restaurants of all kinds where people meet with the double aim of breaking bread together and of taking up matters of the most varied kind. Businessmen and women, tradespeople, industrialists, politicians, now follow the custom of combining the day’s first work session with breakfast.” Patricia Quintana

“The story of a people’s bread, a food they eat daily, is a good window on their history, their spiritual beliefs, their economy, and their agricultural practices.  Because of corn’s importance to the Natives of the Southwest, it became a central element of their culture and elaborate ceremonialism, especially for planting and harvest, to pay homage to the corn deities.” Beth Hensperger

“For some reason, the word gourmet often sends tremors of terror through even the most avid home cooks. But gourmet food doesn’t have to be intimidating. To me, gourmet cooking simply means taking the extra time to find the freshest products, taking a little more care in the preparation, and taking the time to put the food on the plate in an appealing manner.”  Charlie Trotter

“Do things over and over, every time just a little bit better than the last. Repetition improves the quality of your craft and broadens your capabilities as a cook. The first time you make gnocchi, if it comes out right, its probably because you got lucky.  But if you continue to make it again and again and it comes out right, its because you’ve picked up the nuances of the process-how hot the potato is when you mix it with the flour, how moist the potato is, how sticky the dough is when you mix it-all those minute variations that are impossible to articulate precisely and are therefore knowable only through experience, touch, sight, and smell, through repetition and paying attention every step of the way.”  Thomas Keller

“Whether we call it artisanal baking, the craftsmanship of breadmaking, or bread as metaphor, the fact is that making bread can be a path of self-discovery, not because it is unusual but because it is so usual, so common, so normal, and so much an extension of natural laws, that it accurately reflects the unusual, the supernatural,  and an uncommon spiritual reality in a world in which what has become accepted as normal is but a caricature of natural order.” Peter Reinhart

“I like to think that a loaf of bread in one’s hands is the result of a thousand factors that went into its making.  In a sense, the bread always seems to be one micro step ahead of us, and our daily endeavor is to come to terms with as many of the subtleties as we can.  Those who wish to conquer bread making, then, are sooner or later sure to be disillusioned. In fact, just befriending the bread is reward enough, and a much worthier aspiration.” Jeffrey Hamelman

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