Did your cup actually taste cleaner or did you just feel like a genius for doing less work?

Started using cheap rollers once to save 10 bucks. Spent the next hour picking lint out of the paint. Learned my lesson real quick, felt like a total clown.

That thing about the patina being gone hits home. I got a copper kettle from a flea market, half green with age, and spent a whole afternoon polishing it bright and shiny. Looked great in the photos but now it just sits on my shelf like a new pot. Sometimes I wish I'd left it alone.

Wood fired ovens are definitely different, but that old brick oven at Allegheny is probably a coal fired oven that was converted. A lot of those old Pittsburgh bakeries started with coal because that's what was available back then. They just call them wood fired now because it sounds fancier. The smoky flavor you're tasting is more from the thermal mass of the brick holding heat unevenly, not actual wood smoke touching the bread. Most modern wood fired ovens are built completely different than those old commercial ones. Still makes great bread though, just not for the reason people usually say.

Did you read that study about how apps are designed to hijack your attention, @dakota_patel98?