One of my favorite Knitting ladies lent me one of her cookbooks to experiment with. I’ve been toying with the idea of baking my own bread along with the pipe dream of growing my own veggies and other hallucinations of domestication. Here’s the book:
As covered in past posts, I’ve tried the whole baking bread thing and it was a long and not very successful process. So much work and it cut into my knitting time! When my friend said it takes minutes a day to have fresh-baked bread, I was like, “Sign me up!.” Since she gave me the book, I have read and reread the first few chapters over and over. I don’t want to eff this up. Finally, on Sunday, I bit the bullet.
As per the Master Recipe, I made the dough:
This is where, without the book, I would have gotten nervous. It is a very wet dough for bread dough. Thankfully I read the chapter seven times, so anytime I would doubt myself, I would tell myself to STFU.
Fast forward to this morning. The dough spent the night in the fridge per instructions. This morning, I was ready to bake. Being me, there of course was hilarity. I was preparing my “pizza peel” and this happened:
That moment you are baking bread and get cornmeal in your eye and this is it. This is how I go blind. #cookingproblems—
Manni (@craftyyuppie) June 09, 2014
I really thought, “This is it, this is how I become the Ray Charles of Crafts.” Thankfully, I recovered and so did the dough from a night in the fridge:
After baking, here’s my Artisan bread, which does take more that five minutes a day but I’m still new at it.
The book says that the first loaf is not going to be the best loaf. After reading that, I was expecting a mediocre first loaf and I was happily surprised. If this is supposed to be my worst loaf, I can’t wait for the bread orgy that awaits my taste buds. I do believe my first words after sampling my fresh boule were, “Holy crap, this tastes like real bread!”
Tomorrow, we shall see! This loaf was inhaled at lunch and dinner. I could get used to fresh bread everyday….
Stay tuned…
