Summer Baking

I don't know whether it is my circulation, my conditioning, or just luck of the draw, but my body is calibrated for heat. Some people can stand cold, I wither and die, but I can last longer in the heat and direct sunlight than most people I know. Sure, I wilt like everyone else if there is a hundred degree heat wave for more than a weekend, but all in all, heat is my milieu of choice. As is baking.

Can you see what's coming here? I can be difficult to live with in the summer, because I don't stop baking. I slow it down, and I'm certainly more considerate about what hours the oven is on, but in truth, summer baking turns me on. I love the sweaty intensity of it, the extra salt in the bread, the complete sublimation of comfort and laziness into a deeper weirder communion with the heat. I bake in the heat waves for the same reason some people run or play football in them, or do bikram yoga. It feels good. It feels hardcore. It feels zen and sweaty and disastrous and dangerous and salty-sweet. It's a long deep tunnel with good music and a lonely quest. You crazy people go ahead and play football. I'll be elbow deep in dough.