Mmmm .... Bread

I have finally found another thing that I miss madly and passionately about WA (Joe's Fish Shack being the first) - the Pizza Bianca from the New Norcia Bakehouse.

Just a bit of background - the Bakery was started by the Benedictine monks at New Norcia using their own milled flour and in the best woodfired oven you have ever seen. Actually, I have never seen it but I have tasted its produce so I know it is good. Btw, New Norcia is the only monastic town in Australia (which I knew but Wiki confirmed), Anyway a company now makes the bread - but uses the oven and recipes from the monks.

The pizza bianca is a little hard to describe but to give the experience a go: you pull up out the front of the Mount Hawthorne bakery to be greeted by the heady smell of fresh bread. You enter the shop and find an array of products that makes the mouth water - many are still warm from baking. Your eyes dart around but you know you are going to get the pizza bianca anyway. I always buy what I need plus one more - there is the drive home to consider.

I have eaten it warm and I have eaten it cold and, while warm is the sort of thing they talk about in heaven, cold is very adequate. The bread itself is golden but not crusty. Chewy but light. The sea salt explodes in your mouth. The rosemary hits both the tastebuds and the soul. The oil is *real* oil and caresses the mouth with a smooth fruitiness. And all of this happens at once.

I have tried to make it before (accepting that I don't have a wood-fired oven) but it just isn't right. Subject to how much time I spend on the computer, I think I will have another go today.

My longest drive to buy this bread - 4 hours each way. When I lived in Perth I was even known to sit in peak hour traffic (voluntarily) to cross town and buy this bread and thought nothing of a 45 minutes each way drive to get it on Sunday afternoons.

Life is so simple :-)