Baking bread wasn’t really a choice, nor a chore—it was just what I wanted to be doing all the time. Any free time I had, I was baking bread, or reading about bread, or talking about bread, or daydreaming about bread. It was like when you first get a new girlfriend or boyfriend—you stay up late with them, even though you know you’re going to be so, so tired tomorrow and you really shouldn’t, but you just can’t help yourself. And then somehow you actually aren’t tired the next day, because you’re just so excited about your new buddy, and you can’t wait for the day to pass so that you can get back to hanging out with them into the early morning. This is what it was like with me and bread. We were just in love with each other so hard.