Okay, it’s not really a friend. It’s my original Two Blue Books website. I read that Google will be prioritizing mobile-friendly sites in its search results, and it was the final kick in the pants I needed to create a new site.
A friend helped me build the site in 2006, before the popularity of content management systems and DIY blog websites. He found a template PHP page and style sheet, and we FTP-ed them to my website host’s server and changed all the colors. I thought I should go with yellows and browns, something bread-like, but the green and pink won me over. It seemed like a tribute to the original title I had planned for Bread Science, which was Bread and Roses. (Thankfully I was talked out of it!)
My favorite part about the site, in addition to how easy it’s been (no software updates or database backups), is the random quote at the top of each page. It comes from a list in the code—here they are:
- “If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.” —Robert Browning (1812–1889), English poet
- “As we have seen, bread, and especially dry bread, evokes secretion of considerably larger quantities of saliva than meat.” —Ivan Pavlov”
- “How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?” —Julia Child
- “I understand the big food companies are developing a tearless onion. I think they can do it—after all, they’ve already given us tasteless bread.” —Robert Orben
- “Without bread all is misery.” —William Cobbett (1763?–1835), British journalist
- “Bread and water–these are the things nature requires. For such things no man is too poor, and whosoever can limit his desire to them alone can rival Jupiter for happiness.” —Seneca
- “We have learned to see in bread an instrument of community between men—the flavour of bread shared has no equal.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- “The universe of bread is made up of a nostalgia for one’s childhood, the hard work of farmers, miller and bakers and the distinctive pleasure given by something ‘authentic’ and flavourful.” —Jerome Assire
- “One’s own simple bread is much better than someone else’s pilaf.” —Azerbaijani Proverb
- “Never fall out with your bread and butter.” —English Proverb
- “Whose bread I eat: his song I sing.” —German Proverb
- “The dog wags his tail, not for you, but for your bread.” —Portuguese Proverb
- “A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.” —Aesop
- “Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven.” —Yiddish Proverb
- “The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.” —Chinese Proverb
- “We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.” —Jose Marti (1853–1895)
Each time I’ve thought about building a new site, I’ve gone to look at the old one and been arrested by how much I liked it. So before I take it down, I wanted to post this memorial, for ten years of good service.