breadmaking

from directions in a recipe:

Put the dough in a big, lightly oiled bowl, and cover with plastic wrap for three hours. Turn it out once again, cut it in half, spank it on the counter to get the extra air bubbles out. Let it rest for another fifteen minutes. Then slide your fingers beneath the dough, palm up, so that you're vaguely shaping it into more of a ball again. Pick the balls up and place each into a lightly floured bowl -- preferably something that breathes...

later:

Cut an X or a C or whatever makes you happy into the top of the loaf with a super-sharp razor blade, slide it into the oven with a nice clean-and-jerk movement, and shut the door. Turn the temperature down immediately to 450 degrees, spray some water on the walls of the inside of the oven, and, quick, shut the door...

Have a glass of wine or three. Give it a good forty to fifty minutes. Take the loaves out when they are the way they should be. You know how it is -- the way you like them. Good and custy, but airy and cloudlike inside. When you knock on the bottom of the loaf, you know it's done when it sounds to your dog like somebody's at the door. Let them cool down, and then give them to people you love...

-- Matthew Batt, "The Path of Righteousness" Tin House 7:1