LET'S BAKE: FRESH BREAD FROM THE OVEN -

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hands kneading a bread dough and a pile of loaves fresh from the oven

Bread. Bread is a staple of life aboard the ship and historically for many people. It smells divine and reminds us of home. It makes me think of sex. Bear with me.

Humans are funny beasts. We are getting better at talking about love, but we aren’t very good at talking about lust. Trust me, meeting a woman, dressed in a catholic schoolgirl skirt who wants you to spank her is a different lust from waking up in a comfortable bed with the woman you love and wrapping her in your arms.

This is bread lust, the lust of home and hearth. And the smell of fresh baking bread is like breathing fresh air onto a simmering fire. Work that bread and tell me your lover doesn’t see those fingers working them. Let the moisture and flour coat you like sweat. It’s all foreplay. Bake the loaf, cut a thick slice, and serve it with butter and honey. And as it drips from their lips, lick it off their chin.

Here is my super simple goto recipe for bread:

Ingredients:

7 cups or about 840 grams of bread flour
3 cups or 7 deciliters of water
2 tablespoons instant yeast or 30 ml (2 packages if you’re buying it like that)
1 tablespoon salt or 15 ml
2 tablespoons of neutral oil, 30 ml – think vegetable or grapeseed
2 medium bread pans

Method:

1, First, warm up some water to dissolve the yeast. Warm, not hot, you don’t want to kill the yeast. If it’s hotter than what you’d use to douche then let it cool down. Work in the flour, salt and oil.

2, Knead for 5-10 minutes. How hard you knead matters, so the best measurement is how you feel the gluten forming up. If you’re slapping it like when you’re making a nice ass pink – ten minutes. If you’re going for bruising – 5 minutes.

3, Put the dough in a bowl and cover it with a cloth. Cotton. Don’t use rayon or some other artificial shit. I don’t know if it matters in terms of the rising, but try to have some fucking standards. 5 minutes

4, Then dust it with flour and shape it into a ball. Like a man’s testicles, it doesn’t have to be a perfect sphere, just a ball. Cover again and let it rise for an hour.

5, After an hour you can divide it into two halves. You can do it with your hands, but it is easier to use something like a dough divider or a knife to make sure you get it right. Separate these out and they will make two loaves. If you don’t want two loaves, and don’t know what to do, ask a ten-year-old to do basic division for you and reduce the above amounts by half. But honestly, if you don’t want two loaves of bread you have made life choices that I question.

6, Turn the halves into balls again. You now have two balls and don’t have to worry about being made fun of, congrats! Sprinkle them with flour and drink a glass of wine. Technically, the wine is optional but I was told to do it by an Italian grandmother, and I’m not questioning the Italians when it comes to bread. If your balls are feeling neglected sprinkle them too. If you go further than that, start a weird Onlyfans. Let the balls rest for 15 minutes. The dough ones.

7, Get a clean surface ready and put flour down on it. Keep some more on hand in case you need it. Press down on the balls and form them into a shape that is right for your bread pan. Put the shaped dough in, cover with the cloth again and let rise for another hour.

8, Preheat your oven to 400F or 200C, stick the bread tins in and let the loaves bake. Take the rest of your wine and read for 40 minutes, and if you don’t have anything to read – keep reading after this and I’ll help you with that too.

9, Take loaves out of oven and let them cool. Fresh bread is best eaten warm, not scorching. Optionally, brush the top with some melted butter.

10, Enjoy.

THE CARNAL KITCHEN

ABOUT LETO

ABOUT LETO ARMITAGE

The door to Leto's quarters. You can see his face through the round ship's window.

Leto Armitage was born in America under a set of circumstances that prophesied that he would one day unite the lost tribes and return the Ever Summer. Somewhere around twelve, he realized he had been left unsupervised and binged too many Arthurian movies in his formative years and that he was just another kid who accidentally got an education while reading above his age level.

By the time he turned old enough to get a passport, he started finding excuses to travel determined to find out what culture, food and women there were to experience. After learning to grill in Oaxaca, do kinbaku in Japan, and being banned from several former Soviet block countries, he returned home to settle down and see what damage he could do locally.

After working jobs including being a short order cook, bodyguarding strippers and professionally doing reader’s advisory for erotica he realized the most reasonable path forward was to become a writer. Today he lives with cats, dogs, and humans who seem to like him despite actually knowing him. He prefers to sit on his back deck, listening to the birds and Barry the Bumblebear bee, while he writes cozy, uplit romance and raunchy erotica.