Fresh baked bread: hot, straight from the oven, crust crackling as it cools on its wire rack in the chill air of winter. You wait, mouth watering. And then — like some Maenad with a sacrificial goat — you tear it apart with your bare hands and share it out, letting its steaming insides warm you all over.

Romantic? Yes. Gruesome? A bit. Rife with all manner of problems? Most definitely.