Winter happiness :: the smell of homemade bread

This is what I did yesterday. Bake bread.

I just love everything in the process of baking bread. The bubbling of the yeast and the smell it releases, combining the ingredients and the stickiness at first, how all of a sudden the ingredients blend and turn into a smooth mass, the kneading, the silky feel of the dough, watching the dough rise, the final shaping, and best of all the scoring - the baker's signature - right before confiding it to the oven. And oh, that divine smell while baking...
I used to bake bread quite a lot, but since we moved to Paris, there's no real incentive for baking bread anymore with more than a dozen of bakeries within close walking distance.

Was it the winter cold, I'm not sure, but yesterday I felt a sudden urge to bake bread. And it turned out so good. Even with the crust a little burned...
This is what I call real comfort food - homemade bread with a bowl of steaming hot homemade soup...