January 29th, 2014 - How to bake bread

As luck would have it, I have incredibly talented bakers in my life.  So far this month, I've learned how to make a Danish treat (ableskiver) and how to bake and decorate a cake.  It's been an anti-Atkins month, and I can certainly dig that.

To round out my lessons regarding baking, my boss, Kate McKeen, brought me back to the basics.  Tonight, she (and her mom) showed me how to bake bread.

The recipe I used was actually handed down through Kate's mom's family.  They had run a restaurant in West Virginia, and Kate's grandmother had gotten up at five o'clock each morning to start making bread.  I prefer to wake up around noon and go to the store to get mine, but to each their own.

I won't go into exact quantities, because it is a secret family recipe, but you get the idea...

To make this family style bread, you first dump in your flour and make a volcano in the middle of it, like so:

Tommy Lee Jones is down in there somewhere...

Next, add your other ingredients, except the yeast, into the volcano.  You mix the yeast in luke warm water (not too cold, or it won't mix well, and not too hot, or it will kill the yeast).  Once the yeast has dissolved into the water, you slowly pour this mixture into the volcano.

Doesn't that look like good bread?!

Next, you mix all of this together...it can get kind of messy...

When you are done mixing it together and it is nice and smooth, you fold it into a loaf like shape and put it into a bread pan to let it rise.  This can take at least an hour or so (or more than an episode of The Following).  Once the bread has risen, you pop it in the oven for another hour or so.  And what you get is something like this:

I might have used too much dough...

Elizabeth and I snacked on some of the bread and we found it to be quite good!  Aside from the length of time waiting, it really didn't take all that much effort at all. It's definitely something I can see doing again...at least until after this loaf is done.  Judging by the size of it, that will be early next year...



Other things I learned/looked up:
1) How to make snow cream! Elizabeth showed me how to make this "cool" (ha, see what I did there) treat last night with some of the remaining snow in our yard.  It was a mix of milk, vanilla extract, and sugar, and it's wayyyyyy better than that yellow snow I used to eat.  Wait...it was ok to eat that...right?