I have been baking bread again, and it feels so good.

I don't know why I stopped. I suppose I didn't have time one day so I got a loaf from the fabulous bakery a couple of miles away. The fact that their bread is so good did not help matters. It made it easier and easier not to have time to bake.

But that changed a few months ago. Not the bakery's bread, I mean. It's still amazing.

I was at the grocery store with my wife, and we were in the baking-goods aisle for non-bread-baking reasons. We saw a bag of what said it was artisan bread flour, and my wife suggested I should buy it for a special treat.

In my world, artisan bread flour is a special treat. It occurs to me that I might be a little unusual.

I scoffed at first, wondering what could make flour artisanal and also whether the word "artisan" was meant to describe the flour or the bread it makes. But then I saw that it is especially high in protein, between 12.5-13.5%, and then I understood.

The more protein in flour, the chewier the bread will be. It will rise higher and have a crispier crust, as well, and is especially good for doughs that rise over a long time.

We bought a 5-pound bag — it's made by Bob's Red Mill — and I started baking bread again that night.

The shift in my attitude was subtle, but noticeable. All of a sudden, all was right with the world.

I mean, obviously all was not right with the world. Have you seen the world lately? But still, I felt a connection to the Earth.

Maybe not to the Earth, either. Maybe it is a connection to humanity. People have been baking bread for as long as there have been people, or at least civilization. According to a paper published by the National Library of Medicine, Einkorn wheat was first domesticated in Turkey around 10,000 years ago.

By baking bread, I am participating in an ancient ritual. I am mixing flour and water and salt together (and also yeast, though our forebears used yeast that was floating in the air and didn't know it) and creating something that is not identifiably flour or water or salt, or even yeast.

Just as people have for 10,000 years.

I am also saving money, which is no small part of the joy I get in baking. That bakery's bread is spectacular, but it ain't cheap. A loaf of some of their best bread can cost $9, though I also love their $7.50 loaves. Another excellent bakery I pass on my way to my favorite bakery has almost equally great bread for $7 and $8.

The Bob's Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour isn't exactly free, either; you can pay as much for a 5-pound bag as you do for some of these bakery loaves, but it's a 5-pound bag. That's enough to make more than five loaves of bread (high-protein flour is a little heavier than all-purpose flour).

Schnucks recently had it on sale for $1.50 off. I bought two bags. I'm almost done with the first one.

Remember, this is a special-treat type of flour that has now become our norm. If you don't want to spend that much on flour, literally every other flour on the market is also good.

A week or two ago, we decided to mix up our recipe a bit — I just use the recipe on the side of the bag, honestly — and make a loaf of whole wheat bread.

That involved math, though a lot less than I feared. Whole wheat flour is denser and has more protein than high-protein flour, so it requires more yeast. But I had used the same proportion of whole wheat to white flour before, so I could just do some simple extrapolation.

I'll spare you the details of the math. Let's just say that those word problems we used to have to solve in school actually do come in handy after all.

The bread turned out great. Not local-bakery great, but great enough — and I have the satisfaction of knowing I made it myself.

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