Home Baked Bread

Nothing beats the authentic smell of fresh home-made bread and coffee in the early morning.

Bread and coffee both have those authentic smells you just can’t fake.

For years I’ve been kneading my own dough and baking my own bread. And even though the time that I have available has been considerably reduced as I have gathered more contracts, I still make my own bread. And coffee.

Difference is that nowadays I wake up at 5 AM to the smell of fresh bread whereas it used to be that the kids walked in to that smell around 5 PM. The magic that causes it is a Black & Decker Bread Machine. I put in the ingredients, set the timer and at the right time my bread is ready.

It’s kneaded longer and I would say better than I would have done by hand. Yet in the bread Usenet newsgroup I read, alt.bread.recipes, you still happen upon discussion about how hand-kneaded is better than machine-kneaded. How home-made hand-made bread is better than home-made machine-bread.

The truth is of course far from it and has me produce bread in a shorter amount of production time — and at times where I normally wouldn’t be productive in the kitchen at all.

Home-made bread is pretty much like home-made PHP. What you’re looking for is the great taste, the authentic smell. The actual baking process, like the level of gluten involved in making bread, is not something you want to get into: you simply want the real bread.

Unlike with bread machines I don’t like any given PHP solution. “Frameworks” as their called. What I do like to do is look at them and take whatever piece of code I find cleverly constructed and use that in my own PHP-baking process.

The programming world is full of great coding material – to let that knowledge pass by in favor of “home spun” every time is a true disfavor to your clients.