Since I have been on involuntary retirement, I have been baking all the bread we eat. I happen to like bread a lot and I find the usual mass produced cotton bread to be unpalatable and the artisan stuff (at $3 a loaf and up) to be not much better than I make, if any.
I have a double oven, one over the other, and I have taken to using the upper one (which heats unevenly) as a proofing box, where the doughs rise and after shaping, the bread loaves rise. After a while that oven has taken on the characteristic smell of yeast byproducts, but I just figured out why I like it so much. It’s a sweet, heavy smell, most of the time, unless I am making a sour-based bread, and of course it’s redolent of CO2. To sum it up, it’s like the breath of a sleeping newborn: slightly sweet, slightly sour, with lots of CO2. Perhaps only a parent could make the association and revel in it . . . . . I know I do.