The View From the Couch

COVID, week two

My view for the last week or so

I have had COVID twice now. The first time around was in January 2020, back when the disease was little more than a distant rumor here in the US; I only recently came to realize that it had been COVID when my former ATK colleague and desk-neighbor reminded me that I’d passed along whatever I’d had to her and she promptly lost her sense of taste and smell for a few weeks. (Thankfully not longer than that, especially given the nature of our work.)

I recalled that bout as unpleasant and long-lasting, but it wasn’t until this round that I remembered quite how unpleasant it was. And while I started to feel a little better around day three and assumed that the worst of it was behind me, it actually took a downward turn again not long after that, and I am now on day seven of this garbage.

There have been a lot of unpleasant symptoms, but by far the worst of them is the complete and total inability to keep my attention focused on one task long enough to do anything remotely useful. Focus is a challenge for me at the best of times, but right now I can barely string two words together, much less enough of them to comprise entire sentences. (Yes, yes, I know I somehow wrote this post, but if you only knew how long it took me to get this far.)

All of which is to say that I don’t have much for you today. My goal had been to write something about Breaducation, The Book, and the ways in which I might use the newsletter as a scratchpad/sounding board/laboratory for it, but—especially since I haven’t sorted out yet what that might look like—I didn’t have it in me.

So instead I thought maybe I’d use this post to find out more about your thoughts on my future bread book, which is for all of you, after all.

• What, if anything, are you looking for in a bread book, particularly one focused on the fundamentals of baking?

• Are there topics, techniques, styles, or recipes you are especially keen to see in one?

• How many of you would like to participate in helping to shape the contents of the book?

• Or help test recipes?

Thank you for your help with this, it will be an essential part of the process.

—Andrew