Seeing a picture of freshly baked bread on my friend's
page, my first thought was about the smell of fresh bread. It is magic, I
say and if you haven't known that smell, then my friend, you haven't
been initiated into the fine art of smell and fragrances.
I
have always been a sense person with smell dominating the senses.
Freshly baked bread is not freshly baked bread alone - It is freshly
baked bread and much more if you care to allow the smell to carry you
into far away lands where there are dozens of bread episodes which are
time-specific. And, no matter how much you have eaten store bought fresh
bread, you cannot savour the smell until you have baked a bread and
waited till the smell filled the tiny kitchen and then the adjacent room
before filling the entire room and finally forces itself into your head
through your nose. It lives there for years to come and will come out
when you least expect it to raise its head - while having tea with a
close friend who remarks on your fine bread or a child who speaks of the
bread in passing or a silly song that was playing while baking the
bread and is now playing on the radio.
Ah, you will say,
the smell still lingers but not time. Those were the days I had time and
interest to bake and bask in bread and then you stop. You stop because
you have smelt that smell from your memory and you yearn . . . you yearn
to smell real fresh bread and you search for dough (the eating kind)
and salt and yeast and you work to smell that smell and savour that
smell for years to come. Time can never be trusted but memories can sure
coerce you to knead and sing along.
