Beyond Bread

Let's just go ahead and say it .... I am not a good baker. I can cook perfect pork tenderloin en croute and herbed potatoes as one of my regular, rotating recipes without batting an eye, but baking has always been tough for me. WHY is this? I learned to bake a pie when I was probably 7 years old so why do I still have a hard time with it?

It's probably one of those I-suck-at-this-so-I-will-focus-on-what-I'm-good-at type of things. I don't want to be one of "those Moms" who can't bake anything. The horror! Is it so much to ask for it to taste good AND look good?

My Mom has been baking since I can remember. My whole life she baked. Let me put it this way .... she baked all the desserts for my wedding. She bakes bread for her church every Saturday and has often given me an extra loaf which we literally inhale in about 2 days. I was telling a friend of mine about this and I said,"My Mom bakes bread every week. It must be easy." To which she said,"I know your Mom .... she just makes it LOOK easy." True statement.

I thought that I would just "give up" and get a bread maker to do the whole thing for me. I even priced out the one I wanted. A fancy $150 machine that could make French rolls among other things. The thought of spending that much money on a machine that could "cheat" me into home made bread bugged me. I realized that I could TOTALLY make bread on my own and gave up the machine idea all together. I have a college degree for crying out loud! I can SO do this.

I got out my fancy bread making book .... The Bread Bible. This book is incredible. If you follow every instruction you will make perfect bread probably every time. That's what I hoped anyway. The recipes are precise (IE: 2 cups and 6 and a half tablespoons of flour), a little fancy, a little fussy, and time consuming. Fine by me. As long as I could make what I wanted to make and have it turn out I am just fine with time consuming.

I wanted to start with basic white bread. This recipe describes the bread as,"What Wonder Bread, in it's soul, really always wanted to be." Sounds good to me. I like the idea of bread having a soul. About 7 hours after I made my "starter sponge", lots of mixing, waiting, rising, mixing, and more rising I ended up with these ....

They turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. They have this gloriously delicate "crunch" around the whole thing that gives it great texture and seems to hold in the moisture. This is the kind of bread that you can eat totally plain. Just good, home made, good to eat, good to look at bread.

I am writing this post now because I am waiting for my starter sponge to ferment for an hour at room temperature so I can refrigerate it over night for "full flavor potential." Tomorrows project .... Monkey Bread.