So this blog is about digging into life, seizing the reins, charging ahead, leaving no stone unturned, arrgh! No half-assing allowed.
This may take awhile, a chronic procrastinator jumping into full-force mode overnight. Lots of bad habits to break.
Take breadmaking. I have scheduled a week of breadmaking edification for myself and you, my gentle readers. The point – to get beyond following a recipe (I can do that just fine) and getting a real sense of how flour and water turn into a living dough and then delicious fresh-from-the-oven bread. Timing, proportions, temperatures, humidity, all that stuff, and that’s not even getting into the living breathing part of the yeast which, to be honest, I know absolutely nothing about… yet.
I started out pretty well. I have Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for More Food: food x mixing + heat = baking. Lovely book, lovely man. And I purchased a coffee-table sized book called The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. All I had to do was read the forward and I was sold. “I realized that upon considering all the joyous moments of my existence on this earth, I am most content when making bread.” (Oh, I relate, I relate! Or at least I want to.) She seemed immensely knowledgeable in a way that’s inspiring not daunting. And there were pictures illustrating everything she said. Sold!
So it all begins quite well on a Saturday morning, me with my coffee and coffee-table Bread Bible. I read the forward again, yes I love this woman, then I’m in the middle of all the different “starters”, those bits of dough and yeast and water you stir up the day before to give “depth and complexity” to the bread. That’s all fine, but there are so many of them, all with foreign names like “bigga” and “poolish” and “sponge.” Well, sponge isn’t foreign but in this context it is.
So what do I do? I skip straight to the bread recipe I really want to make – Wonder Bread. Only ten times more delicious because it will be homemade.
It starts with a sponge. Easy enough. 12 oz. flour, 14.3 oz. water, 1.5 oz. honey, 2.4 grams of yeast. What? How is one supposed to measure that? Turns out Beranbaum is a huge fan of weighing ingredients because that’s the only way to be consistent in the proportions and that’s the only way to wield even scant control over your dough. I, however, don’t have a kitchen scale. I come up with the brilliant idea of using my Wii Fit scale. No good. It measured the same pile of flour three very different ways, something to keep in mind when you’re weighing yourself on the thing.
So I succumbed and half-assed my first step, measuring ingredients out of horribly inaccurate measuring cups and spoons. Oh, well, I say, this will be a practice loaf.
I turn out what I think is a pretty decent, if watery, sponge.
Pop it in the fridge around noon and expect to begin bread baking sometime in tomorrow’s early a.m.
Oh, sigh. Half-assing step number two. Getting around to the baking. I don’t get started until twoish in the afternoon the next day. Sprinkle the rest of the flour on top of the sponge. Was I supposed to do this last night? Oh, oops, and here it says letting your sponge ferment for over 24 hours can lead to off-tastes. Ha, that ship’s sailed.
I let it sit a while later because I think I’m supposed to let the sponge bubble up through the layer of dry flour. It doesn’t and I proceed as if it had. Still not clear on this sponge thing, maybe I should have read the beginning of the book.
Ok, long story short, I knead the dough successfully in my KitchenAid mixer, brilliant, and then set it in a warmish area of the kitchen to let it rise. Ok, that’s a lie. I pop it in the oven with the light on because someone on a blog said it would speed things up. Then I forget about it until nine that night. Oh well, how off tasting can bread be?
I refrigerate the dough, nicely bubbled as it is, practically falling out of the bowl. I will continue in the morning. Nowhere have I read that you can pause breadmaking in the middle and pick it up the next day. Nowhere have I read you can’t.
The next morning (up early) I let the dough rise once again, divide into loaves, rise yet again, and baked it.
The results – two beautiful, aromatic, soft loaves with, I have to admit it, something amiss in the taste. I slathered butter on and decided I didn’t care. This was afterall my practice loaf.
Tomorrow I get into the good and gritty of breadmaking, I promise. I will explain this sponge thing and even use a scale. See ya then!
