Mark Bittman

I'm a home schlep, home baker.

People love it.

You know, it's like with anything else.

Yeah.

You know, you can make a really good, I don't know, spaghetti amatriciana, you know, and then you go to somebody who's been making it every day for 30 years, eight times a day, 20 times a day.

It's like, there's just these things that people learn to see, you know?

Well, my first loaf of bread was white bread from Joy of Cooking with butter and milk in it, and it was a mess.

And...

Really, it was when we did the no-knead bread that I learned that more water, more water, more water, and it makes it less sticky because you've got it sort of slippery, and it does make it easier to handle.

It also makes the bread better.

It turns out bread is like a gas bag of—

You know what I mean?

No, when you want – you're also a journalist, and what journalists do is they call people who know what they're talking about and say, help me figure this out.

I called someone the other day, and I'm like, we are – all these people are saying, oh, I'm gluten intolerant.

I'm using air quotes because –

It's not the same as celiac, right?

People say I'm self-diagnosed gluten and I can eat your bread and it's fine.

So I'm like, well, that's like how people say, oh, I went to Europe and I could eat the bread there.

So I called someone who knows why that is.

And it's complicated, but it's real.