Bread Making

For over a year, Jay asked me almost every weekend if I wanted to make homemade bread. And every weekend I told him no. This may come as a surprise if you know how much a like cooking. But cooking and baking are entirely different. Cooking can happen quickly and adjustments can be made on the fly based on personal preferences, etc. Cooking can handle creativity and intuition. Baking on the other hand requires careful measurements and lots of waiting. Its not that I didn't want fresh, warm, delicious-smelling bread. I just am extremely impatient and bread is way too labor intensive, requiring constant attention and care.

The solution was to buy a bread maker. This way, we could make homemade bread, but I wouldn't be tied to the house watching it rise and painfully waiting for the next step. The breadmaker has worked out well the 3-4 times we've used it this year. We took it out this weekend for another whirl. We wanted fresh bread to have with our special Moroccan olive oil that came in our Z Club installment.

Here is a recap of the experience:

Take 1: We find a recipe we like and start mixing the dry ingredients. Then I realize we don't have semolina flour, which is required for the recipe, so Jay goes to the grocery store to get the flour.

Take 2: Jay gets back from the grocery store with the semolina flour and after adding it to the recipe I realize I mixed in the yeast instead of the gluten. Yeast has to go separate. Now we are out of bread flour.

Take 3: We go back to the grocery store for bread flour. When we get home, we start over entirely and actually get the ingredients right this time. This recipe requires some unique baking, but our fancy bread maker is customizable, so we enter in the appropriate information. We turn it on and things go well for about a second until the unit powers off entirely. It won't go back on. Goodbye breadmaker.

Take 4: Instead of wasting the ingredients, Jay starts mixing by hand. We cover the dough and leave the bread for its first rise, committing ourselves for an evening of watching and waiting.

I should have just given in from the get go. The bread was fantastic. Mia (our little carboholic) can't get enough of it. I may even be up to doing this again next weekend.