Food critic

You haven't tasted bread like this because bread like this doesn't exist. Just the smell of it is making me high. It smells so strong that I can't taste my espresso. I'm reporting from the island of Paros, and while it may not be the most impressive of the Greek islands (I don't know, it's the only one I've seen), it's lovely enough not to be real. I'm floating a little bit.

The bread is very soft, but barely doughy. In fact, if it's consistency is so perfect that it seems if it were baked a second longer it would be dry, and a second less, undercooked. It defines all of the other breads I will eat and bake in the future; it is my new standard. There is a flavor which I know but cannot place at first. Then I understand. The mystery flavor is made of two parts: the scent of lingering sesame seeds from the bread baked previously (or from the floor of the oven), and the taste of the oven itself, which definitely has a stone (not clay) hearth. Now I understand why this is Mona's favorite bread, the best bread of the island, (and I think it must be one of the best breads in Greece as well). It is because it is baked on the stones from the island itself. When it comes to food, you can't get any more deep-o than that. The bread is unbelievable, inconceivable, but the concept is perfect. Can I intern here?

I'll have to make a friend on the boat I'm about to take because this is too good to eat alone. It's very lightly sour. The texture is not just soft, but springy, with small holes. The inside pulls away from itself in clean pieces like mozzerella cheese. It's not flakey but it dreams of being flakey, as if it admires its cousin, the brioche, but knows it is not a brioche. I bought two different kinds--a white and a wheat loaf. Miraculously, the wheat loaf has the same light texture as the white, just barely rougher, with seeds. They are both full of god.

The bakery is called Ragoussis, it is in the city of Parikia, and it is the self-proclaimed "bakery of the country bread-of the sandwich-of the croissant-of the sweet."