I see that I'm not the only geek who likes baking. When I was a PhD student I seriously considered packing it all in and starting a bakery. I'd just discovered what seemed like the forgotten secret of good bread: time. At the that time in the UK most bakery bread was terrible and bread recipes in books or online called for short rises in warm places. I had to go back to older books to discover the secret.

I would have been ahead of my time if I'd actually gone through with it. These days it seems that the secret is out again with recipes calling for 6+ hour rises. In the town I used to live there is a very successful artisan bakery now.