A baker tries a cleansing diet

Is it feasible to bake while on a cleansing diet?

I am on a two-week cleansing diet. Two weeks of no dairy, oil, carbohydrates, sugar, or alcohol. I am doing well until Nature decides to bless us with a refreshing rain for days on end. When it rains, I yearn to bake bread.

So I bake homemade bread with milk, avocado oil, and organic flour. I’d never cheat on this diet – so I won’t eat any of the bread. I’ll simply enjoy the homey, warm, rich, fragrant scent swirling around my kitchen as it bakes, wafting up the stairway and drifting into my writing studio at the far end of the upstairs hall.

I do need to sample the dough to assure I don’t omit essential ingredients.

When I remove it from the oven, I need to confirm that its texture is appropriate which requires me to slice off a piece.

While washing up baking dishes, I notice a tad bit of butter remains in the butter bowl which I want to wash, so I’ll just use it up on that fresh slice of bread lying on the cutting board.

Then my husband gets home from work, smells the bread, and wants a slice. A good wife doesn’t want her husband to eat alone so she has a slice along with him. But I’m well-disciplined. I skip the apricot jam and firmly decline a full glass of wine, suffering myself to sip only a half glass.

I suspect that by the end of these two weeks I will need to extend my cleanse to three weeks. Unless we get a late snow. In that case, it may extend to four because when it snows, I yearn to make fudge.