You know how sometimes you just discover something simple but wonderful and it changes your whole day and sometimes your regular habits?
In this case, I’m talking about bread.
Yes, bread.
Polish rye bread, actually.
I’ll explain: First, I’m a big bread lover. There’s nothing better to me than a really good baked bread, especially with soup or a salad or cheese or butter. The simpler, the better. I don’t want wacky ingredients or daring bakery flavor combinations; I want good, unpretentious bread.
Last week, I practically swooned with happiness.
The bread in our local corner bakery is so-so—mostly what I call puffy white bread. We buy our regular brown bread at the grocery store or larger bakeries when we go “into town”; ie: Gdansk. But even that’s just okay. It’s something to make sandwiches with, if you know what I mean.
Then last week Anna and I went to our local farmer’s market. This is a farmer’s market and sort of flea market in one—you can buy potatoes and a freshly plucked chicken and socks and in the winter, old fur coats. It’s pretty eclectic and not like the stylish farmer’s markets I went to in Portland—the kind with sustainably farmed lamb or heirloom tomatoes. Our little market is quirky and always surprising. We go every Friday.
So anyway–last Friday we discovered a new vendor, wedged into a little nook between the lady who sells laundry soap and chocolate (an unlikely combination, maybe, but quite convenient actually) and the man who sells unmatched teacups and saucers and other things apparently rescued from someone’s attic. The new stand is bread, and on impulse I picked up—at random—a loaf of dark bread. I didn’t know what kind it was and there wasn’t really much chance of communicating with the elderly man who ran the stand. (Except, like all elderly Polish people, he patted Anna’s head and gave her a free halva.)
So we went home and sliced up the bread and I will tell you that it’s reason enough to come to Poland. It’s amazing. I mean, amazing.
Like I said, sometimes it only takes something very simple that changes your day and your habits. Now we have a new place to stop every Friday for bread. My breakfast routine has changed to coffee and a big piece of bread with butter. I would eat it for lunch too but that might just be sheer indulgence.
Back again today? Of course.
Happy Friday!
