So, I want to bake bread.
Not just because the bread at Overwaitea always arrives only days before the expiry date. Not just because the home bakery in town charges A LOT for a loaf of fresh bread. And not just because I want to make cinnamon buns. I want to prove I can do it! And without the help of a breadmaker (mostly because I don't want to buy one).
So my best friend and her husband have been making bread for some time. (Cue jealousy) She recently made a blog post here Rachel Learns Everything about making a quick and easy bread. It looked so good and sounded relatively simple so I figured, sure, I can do that.
Cue the horror music.
So it started out okay. I got Hugh to convert the weight measurements into something I could use ( I mean really, who measures water by weight??) I guess someone does. What happened to good old metric? I added my ingredients mixed and thought "this is easy!" Covered it with saran wrap and left it in our bedroom overnight.
Like Christmas morning I popped out of bed to eagerly check on the bread. Now to be fair, I grew up watching my mom make bread. I watched bread rise, get pounded down, only to rise again. Sounds like an inspirational poster doesn't it? So as I looked down excitedly expecting to see a puffed up bowl of dough I was sorely disappointed. It had barely moved. It was spewing out tiny bubbles though so I figured life did exist in there, but it seemed to be struggling.
I whinged to my husband. I abandoned it for another couple hours. No change. I figured, why stop now. Maybe I am expecting too much? I read the directions faithfully.
"Scrape edges of bowl, dump out onto floured surface, take edges and pull around then flip so you have a nice round doughball."
I poke my batter. It grasps my finger and just will not let go. Huh. I flour said finger and have another go. Same result. "Uh oh." I think. I swirl the dough around a little more and it has the consistency of thick paper mache. "And I am going to eat this?" I wonder.
Finally with much courage I flour my counter and pour this sucker onto the counter. Yes I mean pour. It begins to spread across my counter slowly reminding me of some strange suffocating creature. Frantically I powder the top with flour and valiantly attempt to fold and edge over. Creature says "NO!" and commences smothering my hands. My hands did not stand a chance. Thank goodness I had had the forethought to move my wedding rings to higher ground, like the top of the fridge!
Okay enough of this, I think and I fight back with my only weapon. Lots of flour. I threw handfuls of flour at this thing attempting to appease it insatiable hunger for hands with flour. Finally after much feeding and gentle kneading it was coaxed into something vaguely resembling a sloppy ball and thrown back into a bowl for a second go at rising.
Meanwhile I contacted me friend and cried for help on her blog. Being in England, I think she was sleeping at the time. Bad timezones!
According to the recipe this should take about 1.25 hours. I eyeball it at the appointed time. No a bit of movement. 2.5 hours, still nothing. At this point I got bored and went and watched a movie and gave up on the whole sodding mess.
As they say a watched kettle doesn't boil, a watched fax machine will not fax, and apparently a watched batch of bread dough will not rise.
Dinner time rolls around and hubby heads into the kitchen to cook. Next thing I hear is, "You had better come in here."
Bread dough is now twice its original size. Well, yippy!
Next I realize that the recipe actually asks for some fancy cooking set up involving more than the one rack we have for our oven. Who would think you would essentially need to set up a humidifier in your oven to cook bread?? I decide to cook to at traditional bread temperature and then drop the heat like it is suggested in the original recipe.
35 minutes later my bread...looks like bread. Holy holy. Look at that! And it actually tastes okay too. A bit heavy (kind of sourdough texture), but still not bad.
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- So what have I learned. Even when things are not working out, throw more flour at it and keep going.
- Trust in my instincts
If I am going to start cooking with recipes involving weight I had better get myself a scale
I wonder if I could get a cute once second hand...hmmm
Oh my goodness I am so sorry! Most everything here is by weight and nearly every good bread recipe has to be, as there is a hydration ratio you have to keep to. I'm still sorry. At least it looks like bread! Also, if you can't use a steam pan, just use a spray bottle to mist the insides of your oven right when you put the bread in, then every fifteen minutes. But don't spray the light bulb. It will explode. :)
ReplyDeleteWahaha, Thanks for the warning about the light bulb. That is not something I want to learn by trial and error. :P
ReplyDeleteI am having better luck with traditional bread recipes from the 50's.