Guilded!

While baking during a blackout in NYC.....what else was there to do? Without my forum mates and my spouse away, I proceeded to relieve depression by baking in horrific conditions and realized the connection of our ultra modern world and the disconnect from our past! Bread perhaps being a lucky mistake by the ancients whose mouldy grain fermented and baked in the heat of burning ash or whatever? Well they did it, by using the most basic ingredients on earth created a sustenance which still is made today in almost the same way, or is it? Have we really stayed in line with the ancients formula? Some say we aren't eating enough bread like we used to, Professor Kaplan of Cornell University has admonished the French in losing there traditional tastes and methods! American bakers are winning Coupe De Monde titles like the tour De France, sacre bleu!Can we a country with little more than 200 hundred years as a Republic overtake what has been centuries old artisanal trade?As a member of the Bread Bakers guild and an avid home baker. I sometimes wonder if we are just trend setters or are we highjacking the word "artisan", are we fit to bake, do we know what it's all about?While I twisted Pretzels and folded bordelaise dough I thought more of how the bread would taste with something good inside as a sandwich, far be it from me to to decipher all these questions, it's a blackout, I'm sweating and the levain is fermenting faster than usual, no air conditoning for 7 day's, no hot water from the tap, I can make believe I'm in a hot cellar toiling near the hearth of a wood burning stove feeding the oven with a new load of loaves.