My father, Norman Horwitz, was a renaissance man. He was a medical nuclear physicist, at the forefront of the fight against cancer. Outside of work, Norm was an inventor and trendsetter. Among his passions were cooking and baking. From an early age I would find issues of Gourmet magazine around his reading chair. At the end of a year or so, my Dad had the issues bound at a book bindery. I remember how tempting those fat volumes were, sitting so properly on their shelf in his library. I loved to look through the glossy pages of these precious volumes. Another passion of Norm's was collecting old cookbooks, often from cooks and bakers who were innovators. I remember watching Julia Child and The Galloping Gourmet on television; this was before the Internet, cable, the Create Channel, and social media groups like the one I am typing in just now. Norm would have loved the Internet!
Norm loved to bake bread. He chatted up the local Jewish baker to try to find out the secret of his Kaiser rolls. He brought home thick tiles to put into the oven to bake bread with, infusing them with water to produce steam in order to achieve the type of crust he'd grown to love in France. By this time I was in my teens, and Norm encouraged my interest in bread making. He bought me Bernard Clayton's Bread Book--a bible I still rely on today. I was successful with many bakes from this book and I loved experimenting. I just baked a batch of buttermilk loaves, my family's favorite.
Because of Norm, I am sitting here at the kitchen table, which was his kitchen table. On the counter behind me are three sourdough starters bubbling away. Hopefully they will get me back into baking the sourdough I learned about from a class at Zingerman's. I also bought a Udemy class by Teresa Greenway from Northwest Sourdough and I just remembered I also have a few others of hers that I haven't watched yet: Learn to Bake Magnificent Challah Bread and Bake Classic Sourdough Bread Like a Professional! Woo-hoo!!!
My heart is full of you, Norm, Dad, my mentor and inspiration in so many things I love about life. Thank you for the gift of bread.
