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Community Corner

Bread Making . . . Basics?

The Brunette Lucy proves once again that she's no baker.

My family loves bread in all its forms. If it’s some sort of baked product and houses lunch meat or can be slathered with butter, they’ll consume it in mass quantities.  While I like bread, I prefer to put meat and cheese on a salad; then promptly negate the nutritional benefit by drowning it in salad dressing.

Unfortunately, I’m no baker; cooking, I can manage. But if it’s a recipe that has any combination of flour and yeast, I’ll mutilate, butcher or in some way humiliate the poor dough. For years, I’d buy bread in a tube, thwack it open on the counter, and throw it in the oven. I tried to pass it off as home made, but the remnants of the tube betrayed me.

So, a few years ago, I bought a bread making machine. For the first time in, well, ever, I pulled a perfect, warm loaf of bread out of the oven. The family was drawn to the kitchen by the foreign smell; I had finally achieved baking success. Week after week, I managed to get the ingredients in correctly and the little machine kept pumping out perfect breads of every type.

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But, like everything, too much of anything is, well, too much. I started using the machine a few times a week, which dwindled to once a month–ish, to once in a blue moon. It was taken off the counter. After a while, the kids began to demand fresh baked bread again, so I dug around in the closet looking for the machine.

Sadly, after I’d loaded it and turned it on, it began to smoke; it was a bread machine no more. As the kids sobbed quietly, I could have sworn I heard Taps playing in the distance as we said our final farewells, and tossed it in the trash.

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This, of course, brought freshly baked bread to the forefront of my kids’ most requested food accompaniment. I wanted to buy another one, since I’d seen them at Salvation Army for $5.00.

Matt, however, being the cheap, no, frugal, of the two of us, quickly pointed out that I have a Kitchen Aid mixer, fully equipped with a dough hook. Why would I want to add another kitchen appliance on an already crowded countertop?

Off to the world wide internet I went, in search of easy bread recipes that utilized my trusty Kitchen Aid. I found a recipe that was called, “Idiot-proof rolls”. I figured if it purported to be fool proof, I could make it.

Turns out, I’m living proof that nothing is idiot proof to a sufficiently talented idiot.

My first endeavor was a disaster; the bread never rose. I checked the yeast wrapper and discovered that it has an expiration date.

I learned my lesson, so much later in another bread making attempt, I “proofed” the yeast. When it proved to be active, I went in search of flour. I dug around and finally found it in the back of the pantry. As I dumped the first cup into the water/yeast mixture, I noticed little spots in the flour. Puzzled, I looked into the bag – and that’s when one of the spots flew out; later to be identified as flour moths.

I screamed, jumped back, and knocked the bag and all of its contents everywhere; the counters, the appliances, the floor, my hair and clothes. This released the fully grown and winged moths into the air, while the squirmy little larva wiggled on every surface, sending me screeching from the kitchen.

Before I cleaned the mess up, I sprinted to the shower. All I could think about were those little flour moths laying eggs and multiplying like lice in my hair.

Once clean and, more importantly, bug free, I wanted to keep it that way; I didn’t want larva on clothes that I’d wear again. I went in search of one of Matt’s old t-shirts he uses when he paints and a pair of flip flops or something rubber that could be hosed off. I fished around the closet floor, and found one flip, but not its mate, flop. I DID, however, in the darkest recesses of the closet, find an old pair of swimming fins sticking out of a bag that held used scuba gear from when Matt wanted to try snorkeling. They were made of rubber & could be hosed off easily; swim fins it was.

I tucked my clean hair inside a shower cap, got into Matt’s t-shirt, and as I was pulling the fins out, I realized that I could use the dive mask and snorkel to keep bugs from flying into my eyes or getting in my mouth.

So there I was, hair encased in plastic, wearing a huge t-shirt, a dive mask covering my eyes, a snorkel coming out of my mouth, wearing over sized swim fins. To avoid tripping, I took giant sweeping steps as I lumbered towards the kitchen.

I must have looked like a cross between Swamp Thing and a sumo wrestler.

In my defense, however, I got the kitchen cleaned up with nary a bug in my eyes, mouth, hair or feet.

Months later, I took a crack at making rolls, and it seemed to be going much smoother. There weren’t any bugs in the flour, the yeast proofed, and the bread rose. I was giddy as I formed rolls for the second rise. I covered them with plastic wrap and checked on them often. To my great surprise, they rose again! I preheated the oven, and pulled the plastic wrap off the rolls.

Turns out, you’re supposed to grease the plastic wrap, and pull it off slowly. I yanked it like I was pulling taffy, and was rewarded with half the dough stuck to the plastic, and a puddle of deflated rolls on the baking sheet.

This brought to mind an old Southern saying; a cat can have kittens in the oven, but it don’t make ‘em biscuits. Alternately, I have a dough hook on my Kitchen Aid, but it don’t make me a baker. I admitted defeat and surrendered; my bread making days are over. Now, when the kids say they want warm bread, I thwack a tube of dough and pass it off as my own.

I’ve gotten much, much better at hiding the evidence.

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