Bread making is especially puzzling to the young set. The amount of work required to make it, and the absurd lengths of time needed for kneading, proofing, rising, etc. make it a kissing cousin to bygone time killers like quilting—religating it mostly to religious families, hobbyists, and fearsome folkies like Ronnie Gilbert. The French realized centuries ago they could buy bread at the boulangerie on the corner that, in fact, exceeded the quality they could manage in their drafty but cosmopolitan-looking home ovens.

That’s fine and good for the French. Alas—if you weren’t alterted by all the fatasses and hot parking lots—this isn’t Paris. While the Parisiens are haughtily enjoying ham and butter sandwiches on perfectly chewy bread, you’re dragging your kids to Albertson’s or Jewel-Osco or the hot-food part of Food-4-Less. That’s what you signed up for when you pleaded with Thomas Jefferson to pay Monsier Bonaparte fifteen million francs for the French Territories, crushing joie de vivre in its slipper tracks. Imagine if the deal had gone south! The better part of the midwest would yet belong to France and we’d all be wearing white jean jackets and picking up our sophisticated girlfriends on mopeds. Next time you’re in Jewel-Osco moving a roll from a translucent bin to a noisy sack with a translucent tong, keep the Louisiana Purchase in your mind’s eye for a moment.

You may remember the advent of “Almost No Knead Bread,” which was invented by the New York Times. I won’t bother reminding you that you’re in America where even noteworthy news organizations can’t help Ben Franklining some inventions from time to time. Because the newspaper’s bread doesn’t actually undergo the yeasty life stages and firm encouragements of traditional breads, it tasted like a flour tortilla. The obsessive food wasters at America’s Test Kitchen took the tortilla taste as a challenge and gave birth to the epiphany that you could fake the sourness and yeastiness of real bread by adding white vinegar and a can of beer to the “almost no knead” recipe. The absurdity of this move is noteworthy, and akin to fashioning a home-made replica of Fred Meyer brand tomato soup by adding an old shoe to the soup tourine. If what you’re going for is a chorus of “It tastes just like bread!” than you’ve found your recipe. If you’re hoping to make actual bread, than get ready for some serious labor and boredom.

Now that all the pussies have left the room, let me tell you a little secret. Breadmaking is actually quite beautiful, and, once you’ve worked through all the derivations of bad homemade bread: saggy bread, crumby bread, burned bread, dense bread, etc., you’ll emerge—like a lad long trapped in a well—to a world that is (yes, the same world you foolishly left when you opted to lean ever so carefully over the well’s dark mouth) now tinseled with new significance.

The reason making bread really tugs at your heart is because the stern and earthy labor of bringing a mass of scaly dough under control is rewarded by a singular moment when the dough “blooms” as it were. It becomes silky and responsive and feels, well, alive. Once again, you’ve done the important work of giving birth to something and then watched with doleful astonishment as the creature evolves and matures at a pace now beyond your control until it is dressed in Spiderman pajamas and cowboy boots and is melting down in the Bi-Mart toy isle.

Basically what I’m getting at is that we’re in the dark ages in terms of bread in this country, which is a phrase that’s fun to say in Mitt Romney’s tonality. To cook like it’s the dark ages you’ll need an iron pot and a pretty hot set of coals. Like 40 coals I’d say. I like to build a tower out of brick to prepare my coals in.

My coal tower looks like the dark tower from lord of the rings. Before I set my fire I mixed up some normal bread and set it to rise.

250 grams bread flour

3 grams yeast

5 grams salt

3/4 cup warm water

1 tablespoon olive oil plus a bunch of olive oil for drizzling on the top of your bread

Sea salt

Rosemary sprigs

After the dough rises and doubles, plop it into your oiled dutch and work it to the edges of the pan. Let it double in size again, inside the pot. Then jab some divots in it and sprinkle it with nice olive oil and rosemary sprigs and sea salt and set it to bake really hot.

I’ve got 19 coals on top and 11 on the bottom. This is a 12” pot. Let it cook for 20 or 25 minutes! We ate the focaccia with some very fine winter squash and mushroom risotto that Robin invented.