I have lived in a number of places. And, sooner or later, I always make friends. It goes along with my belief that no matter where you live, you can find the great things, the great people, the great foods, the great festivals, that make that place special and that you can love.
This is how I make friends: I show up.
It doesn't always work. I showed up every week to ballroom dance class in Austin, TX: no friends. I showed up every week to story time at the library in Cleveland, OH: no friends. I showed up every week to Playgroup for Kids Born in 2006 in Syracuse, NY: no friends.
But usually it works. I show up to school. I show up to work. I show up to class. I show up to Prenatal Pilates. I show up to Baby and Me. I show up to preschool birthday parties. I show up to school volunteer meetings. I show up. I show up. I show up. And, eventually, I make some really, really, really awesome friends.
This, to me, is "getting out there."
Now, I am not a leader. I am much better sitting to the side, watching, helping, doing whatever is asked. Going above and beyond as much as possible, but never being the place where the buck stops.
Another thing about me is that I often have these ideas. Some are big ideas. Some are ideas for other people. But I think about them for a few days, sometimes intensely, at 4 am, then all day, too. And then, 93% of the time, I get over them; 5% of the time, I try to convince someone else to try them; and maybe 2% of the time, I try them. You know. If they're small. And not too ambitious.
Taking care of little kids, which, for hours at a time can involve 90% of your hands but only about 10% of your brain, is an atmosphere where I can spend lots of time thinking up ideas I never get to try out.
One part of The Happiness Project book is about pursuing the Big Ideas and also not being afraid to fail. Finding the fun in failure, she says. So this year, I have been trying to try these ideas that I get excited about, to see if they're any good or not.
That's where this blog came in. And the February Bread Challenge. And my glass etching hobby. And the neighborhood group I'm trying to start. Trying these ideas are ways of pushing myself. I talked in another post about different kinds of pushing yourself. The blog and the glass etching challenge me within my comfort zone, while giving away bread and starting a neighborhood group throw me WAY out of my comfort zone. Way out.
This is a new kind of getting out there. It goes beyond showing up. It is putting yourself right out there. In the street. With a sign around your neck. Naked. And yelling. At least, that's how it feels to me.
And what I've learned so far is that 1) not all my ideas are good ones; and 2) putting myself out there makes me very, very, very uncomfortable.
Showing posts with label February Bread Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label February Bread Challenge. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
February Bread Challenge: Day 29
Boy. Am I glad that's over. I baked 2 loaves this morning, gave one to the school receptionist, and I was done!
What did I learn? Well, the whole project was meant to push my limits in terms of bread baking and in terms of connecting with people. It sort of pushed my limits in terms of bread baking. I found a REALLY EASY system to pump out bread with little effort that completely fit into my schedule and reliably produced two loaves of sandwich bread per day. Not the best bread, maybe, but pretty darn good when it was hot out of the oven. The requirement to give away bread each day, however, did not promote the experimentation and recipe innovation I had thought would be part of the project. I just wanted to make something that people would want to eat, so I played it pretty safe much of the time.
Another thing I found is that there are two kinds of pushing limits. One is pushing limits with something you are comfortable with, but upping the intensity. Baking bread every single day for one month. It took some work, and, I have to say, I feel giddy with not having to mix up any dough tonight. I feel good that I did it, and I now know that if the need arises, I can bake a lot of bread.
The other is pushing limits with something you aren't comfortable with. Throwing yourself into the deep end of the pool and making yourself swim to the side. Giving bread away to people I don't see on a daily basis was a continuing source of stress, concern, and confusion. But it was also a bigger source of satisfaction on some days than the baking was.
Giving bread to neighbors and friends whom I don't see all the time really did make me feel like I strengthened a bond with them, even though I did not magically become a master of the social interaction.
Then there is the category, maybe my favorite, that included the pediatrician, the OB/GYN, the banker who helped the kids open accounts, and the physical therapist. They seemed genuinely touched that someone took the time to express their appreciation for what they do. As my OB said, "Nobody EVER give me ANYTHING!"
Then there is the "going out on a limb category" that included the Ronald McDonald House, the Fire Station, and the bunny lady. At the first it went great, at the second they seemed unsure what to make of someone bringing them a giant boule, and at the third, well, you can read about that here. Those I was glad I did because I had set a goal and then I tried, but they were not really at all fun.
The project got a little old over the past week. In retrospect, my husband identified the 22nd as the day the project "jumped the shark."You may remember that Sunday the 18th I tried making bread with milk and honey and found it to be delicious. You may also remember that on Wednesday the 22nd I was hit with a mild but very queasy stomach bug that resulted in a feeling of disgust being associated with bread dough. Well, in between there I went a little crazy, so taken with the milk-honey mixture that I couldn't believe I hadn't done it sooner. This experimentation reached a fever pitch on Wednesday, when, egged on by my husband, I made a loaf with not only milk, but sugar, cocoa, mashed banana, and vanilla. This not-especially-chocolatey attempt at a chocolate bread is what I ate right before I got sick. I don't think it was actually bad-tasting, but bread dough made with milk started turning my stomach as it sat there in the bowl rising.
So that's it. I have pictures. I timed myself a few of the days. I have insights about the mechanics of bread making. And, of course, I have recipes that I hope to share in the coming days. But now I'm off to enjoy not making any bread.
What did I learn? Well, the whole project was meant to push my limits in terms of bread baking and in terms of connecting with people. It sort of pushed my limits in terms of bread baking. I found a REALLY EASY system to pump out bread with little effort that completely fit into my schedule and reliably produced two loaves of sandwich bread per day. Not the best bread, maybe, but pretty darn good when it was hot out of the oven. The requirement to give away bread each day, however, did not promote the experimentation and recipe innovation I had thought would be part of the project. I just wanted to make something that people would want to eat, so I played it pretty safe much of the time.
Another thing I found is that there are two kinds of pushing limits. One is pushing limits with something you are comfortable with, but upping the intensity. Baking bread every single day for one month. It took some work, and, I have to say, I feel giddy with not having to mix up any dough tonight. I feel good that I did it, and I now know that if the need arises, I can bake a lot of bread.
The other is pushing limits with something you aren't comfortable with. Throwing yourself into the deep end of the pool and making yourself swim to the side. Giving bread away to people I don't see on a daily basis was a continuing source of stress, concern, and confusion. But it was also a bigger source of satisfaction on some days than the baking was.
Giving bread to neighbors and friends whom I don't see all the time really did make me feel like I strengthened a bond with them, even though I did not magically become a master of the social interaction.
Then there is the category, maybe my favorite, that included the pediatrician, the OB/GYN, the banker who helped the kids open accounts, and the physical therapist. They seemed genuinely touched that someone took the time to express their appreciation for what they do. As my OB said, "Nobody EVER give me ANYTHING!"
Then there is the "going out on a limb category" that included the Ronald McDonald House, the Fire Station, and the bunny lady. At the first it went great, at the second they seemed unsure what to make of someone bringing them a giant boule, and at the third, well, you can read about that here. Those I was glad I did because I had set a goal and then I tried, but they were not really at all fun.
The project got a little old over the past week. In retrospect, my husband identified the 22nd as the day the project "jumped the shark."You may remember that Sunday the 18th I tried making bread with milk and honey and found it to be delicious. You may also remember that on Wednesday the 22nd I was hit with a mild but very queasy stomach bug that resulted in a feeling of disgust being associated with bread dough. Well, in between there I went a little crazy, so taken with the milk-honey mixture that I couldn't believe I hadn't done it sooner. This experimentation reached a fever pitch on Wednesday, when, egged on by my husband, I made a loaf with not only milk, but sugar, cocoa, mashed banana, and vanilla. This not-especially-chocolatey attempt at a chocolate bread is what I ate right before I got sick. I don't think it was actually bad-tasting, but bread dough made with milk started turning my stomach as it sat there in the bowl rising.
So that's it. I have pictures. I timed myself a few of the days. I have insights about the mechanics of bread making. And, of course, I have recipes that I hope to share in the coming days. But now I'm off to enjoy not making any bread.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Bread giveaway FAIL
We're getting down to the end of the month! I am behind by a couple of loaves to give away, so this morning I took two loaves of piping hot bread with me in the car when I dropped off the kids at school. On the way, I knocked on our neighbors' door. They are runners, up early, and I thought they'd appreciate some whole-grain bread. Well, I guess they had already gone to work. Oh, well.
So I dropped off the kids, and then headed over to the house of the woman who fosters bunnies and who gave me bunny poop for my garden last year. I have been torn about this all month. She was someone I wanted to thank, but only met once for a few minutes while we shoveled poop into a bucket and the kids met the bunnies she was fostering at the time. I decided not to email her, because I didn't want it to turn into a weird, complicated scheduling thing that would inconvenience her. So I stopped by a couple of weeks ago at about 9 am on a weekday and no one was home, so I decided that she must get up and go to work on weekdays before that time, based on, really, no information at all. So at around 8:30 this morning I pull up, and there's a car in the driveway, so I go to the door and knock timidly on the storm door. Nothing. So I try the bell, but my finger sort of slips off, and I don't hear anything, so I have no idea if it rang. So I wait. But I don't give up. I decide to just knock decisively on the door. I do, then immediately decide I'll leave, when she opens the door.
I don't know if I woke her up, forcing her to get dressed and answer the door, but I am afraid that on this day I had arrived, unannounced, a little too early. Or maybe she was just wondering what the heck I was doing at her door. I re-introduced myself and told her I had made her bread, whereupon she told me that she can't eat bread.
"No gluten?" I asked. Oh, no. I told her that I know how to make peanut butter cookies without gluten, and I could bring her some of those sometime. She insisted that it wasn't necessary, and asked if I wanted some poop, which made me afraid she thought I had just come over to get poop, rather than to strengthen neighborly bonds. I was determined to turn my gesture into something less weird. Apparently, I decided the best course of action would be to refuse to give up. "Are peanuts ok?"
"Yeah...but it's really not necessary."
"Well, I can bring them sometime when I come to get some poop."
"And no eggs."
"Oh."
I was beaten. She insisted that she really didn't need any baked goods from me, and that what she really needed was someone to take away poop. I don't really remember how we ended it. I'm sure I apologized, but, typically, I didn't think to find out when would be a convenient time for me to come and get the bunny poop.
So I dropped off the kids, and then headed over to the house of the woman who fosters bunnies and who gave me bunny poop for my garden last year. I have been torn about this all month. She was someone I wanted to thank, but only met once for a few minutes while we shoveled poop into a bucket and the kids met the bunnies she was fostering at the time. I decided not to email her, because I didn't want it to turn into a weird, complicated scheduling thing that would inconvenience her. So I stopped by a couple of weeks ago at about 9 am on a weekday and no one was home, so I decided that she must get up and go to work on weekdays before that time, based on, really, no information at all. So at around 8:30 this morning I pull up, and there's a car in the driveway, so I go to the door and knock timidly on the storm door. Nothing. So I try the bell, but my finger sort of slips off, and I don't hear anything, so I have no idea if it rang. So I wait. But I don't give up. I decide to just knock decisively on the door. I do, then immediately decide I'll leave, when she opens the door.
I don't know if I woke her up, forcing her to get dressed and answer the door, but I am afraid that on this day I had arrived, unannounced, a little too early. Or maybe she was just wondering what the heck I was doing at her door. I re-introduced myself and told her I had made her bread, whereupon she told me that she can't eat bread.
"No gluten?" I asked. Oh, no. I told her that I know how to make peanut butter cookies without gluten, and I could bring her some of those sometime. She insisted that it wasn't necessary, and asked if I wanted some poop, which made me afraid she thought I had just come over to get poop, rather than to strengthen neighborly bonds. I was determined to turn my gesture into something less weird. Apparently, I decided the best course of action would be to refuse to give up. "Are peanuts ok?"
"Yeah...but it's really not necessary."
"Well, I can bring them sometime when I come to get some poop."
"And no eggs."
"Oh."
I was beaten. She insisted that she really didn't need any baked goods from me, and that what she really needed was someone to take away poop. I don't really remember how we ended it. I'm sure I apologized, but, typically, I didn't think to find out when would be a convenient time for me to come and get the bunny poop.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Cha. Ching.
Our street has about 15 houses on it that were all built in the second half of the 80s by the same builder. At one time, there were 17 kids on the street and, it sounds like, everyone knew everyone. There was a block party every fall, and occasional progressive dinners. A lot of the same people still live here and haven't retired yet, but they have empty nests and not a ton of motivation to get out and make new friends. Pretty much everyone is pleasant, but we don't hang out or anything.
I haven't given away any bread since Friday, so today, as part of February Bread Challenge, I managed to give away 2 loaves. One was to a friend around the corner, who was delighted, and the other was to our next door neighbor, who we sort of know, but don't see much.
She held the warm bread, which was wrapped in a kitchen towel and smelled it. After initially seeming like she maybe was in the middle of something when she first answered the door, she seemed really excited about the bread. Then she said, "Have you talked to [the neighbor who knows everyone]?"
Me: No, not recently.
Neighbor: Well, we've been talking about doing a progressive dinner, like we used to...
Me (interrupting): Oh, that would be great!
N: ...and if you'd like to be included...
Me: We would definitely love to be included!
N: We will probably get together sometime to plan it, I can let you know when that will be. It should be really fun...
I got back in the car so excited. That was just what I hoped would happen if I gave bread to the neighbors! A chance to socialize. Priceless.
I haven't given away any bread since Friday, so today, as part of February Bread Challenge, I managed to give away 2 loaves. One was to a friend around the corner, who was delighted, and the other was to our next door neighbor, who we sort of know, but don't see much.
She held the warm bread, which was wrapped in a kitchen towel and smelled it. After initially seeming like she maybe was in the middle of something when she first answered the door, she seemed really excited about the bread. Then she said, "Have you talked to [the neighbor who knows everyone]?"
Me: No, not recently.
Neighbor: Well, we've been talking about doing a progressive dinner, like we used to...
Me (interrupting): Oh, that would be great!
N: ...and if you'd like to be included...
Me: We would definitely love to be included!
N: We will probably get together sometime to plan it, I can let you know when that will be. It should be really fun...
I got back in the car so excited. That was just what I hoped would happen if I gave bread to the neighbors! A chance to socialize. Priceless.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Oh, the bread.
Yes, I am still making bread. And still not telling you a thing about it. Sorry about that. It's really not my intention to keep you in the dark.
The hard parts of the project remain, in ascending order of difficulty:
1) make bread every day = easy
2) give bread away every day = medium to hard
3) blog about the bread project = apparently impossible
Every day so far this month until yesterday, I have given away bread. Twice it was eating some part of a loaf with a guest here at my house, so those are maybe a little lame, and once I had to freeze a loaf and give it to my target the next day, but yesterday was the first day I just did not manage to give away any bread. Ridiculously, we spent quite a while baking cookies to bring to a friend's house for dinner, but did not bring any bread with us. It was the house of my friend Jennifer, who is the one who got me baking bread in the first place, so I was sure she would have made some fresh bread for the occasion and thought it would be silly to bring bread. Well, she hadn't, and they had some store-bought artisanal bread that was delicious, but very similar to my boule, so I totally could have brought some, but missed my chance. I still have some of yesterday's bread in the freezer, so maybe I can still give some away sometime.
But. Every day so far this month until yesterday, I mixed up dough at night and baked it the next day. Until last night, when we got back from Jennifer's, and I was tired, and I figured, it's Sunday tomorrow, I'll just make some pita bread or something. Well, I never got around to deciding what to do, and we were trying to get a few things done around the house, and finally, at 2:30 I decided to just mix something up, just so I could say I had made bread.
Now, when you are planning to give away the bread you make, you don't have a lot of incentive to really try new things. But today I guess I was liberated by having failed to give away bread yesterday. Plus, I was already cutting the rising time down by about half, so I didn't know how it would come out anyway. So I tried a couple of things I had never done before: used milk instead of water to add some fat, and added honey, thinking that the sugar from the honey might get the yeast going faster than normal. The dough started to rise and smell yeasty, and I thought about leaving it overnight to really do its thing, but then, I thought, No, then I won't have baked bread today. So it's due out of the oven in 2 minutes. I'll tell you at the end of the post how it came out.
I will tell you now, though, that I mixed up a similar mixture tonight, to let it rise overnight and see how that is. And then I licked some dough off my finger. It. was. horrible. So bitter and terrible and punishing. I have no idea why it would taste like that, and I can't really remember if I've ever tasted the dough before, so I don't know if it always tastes like that, or what.
Timer's going off; I'll report back in a minute about the bread coming out of the oven now...
Here it is.
It's kind of short.
Came right out of the pan, though. Sounds hollow when I thump the bottom, that's a good sign.
Seems to be cooked...oh, yum. Not bitter.
Definitely kind of different. Hmmmmm. Better have another piece with butter and honey to really evaluate it properly.
The hard parts of the project remain, in ascending order of difficulty:
1) make bread every day = easy
2) give bread away every day = medium to hard
3) blog about the bread project = apparently impossible
Every day so far this month until yesterday, I have given away bread. Twice it was eating some part of a loaf with a guest here at my house, so those are maybe a little lame, and once I had to freeze a loaf and give it to my target the next day, but yesterday was the first day I just did not manage to give away any bread. Ridiculously, we spent quite a while baking cookies to bring to a friend's house for dinner, but did not bring any bread with us. It was the house of my friend Jennifer, who is the one who got me baking bread in the first place, so I was sure she would have made some fresh bread for the occasion and thought it would be silly to bring bread. Well, she hadn't, and they had some store-bought artisanal bread that was delicious, but very similar to my boule, so I totally could have brought some, but missed my chance. I still have some of yesterday's bread in the freezer, so maybe I can still give some away sometime.
But. Every day so far this month until yesterday, I mixed up dough at night and baked it the next day. Until last night, when we got back from Jennifer's, and I was tired, and I figured, it's Sunday tomorrow, I'll just make some pita bread or something. Well, I never got around to deciding what to do, and we were trying to get a few things done around the house, and finally, at 2:30 I decided to just mix something up, just so I could say I had made bread.
Now, when you are planning to give away the bread you make, you don't have a lot of incentive to really try new things. But today I guess I was liberated by having failed to give away bread yesterday. Plus, I was already cutting the rising time down by about half, so I didn't know how it would come out anyway. So I tried a couple of things I had never done before: used milk instead of water to add some fat, and added honey, thinking that the sugar from the honey might get the yeast going faster than normal. The dough started to rise and smell yeasty, and I thought about leaving it overnight to really do its thing, but then, I thought, No, then I won't have baked bread today. So it's due out of the oven in 2 minutes. I'll tell you at the end of the post how it came out.
I will tell you now, though, that I mixed up a similar mixture tonight, to let it rise overnight and see how that is. And then I licked some dough off my finger. It. was. horrible. So bitter and terrible and punishing. I have no idea why it would taste like that, and I can't really remember if I've ever tasted the dough before, so I don't know if it always tastes like that, or what.
Timer's going off; I'll report back in a minute about the bread coming out of the oven now...
Here it is.
It's kind of short.
Came right out of the pan, though. Sounds hollow when I thump the bottom, that's a good sign.
Seems to be cooked...oh, yum. Not bitter.
Definitely kind of different. Hmmmmm. Better have another piece with butter and honey to really evaluate it properly.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Boule-y boule-y
Challenge Update: I took this picture the other day and now can't remember what I was going to say about it. But I am still baking bread! And tomorrow is the middle of the month! The Challenge is not as challenging as I was afraid it would be. It is just the right amount of challenge. The challenge really has been having a chance to blog about it or anything else.
The computer is back with a new hard drive, but the challenge with that is that we upgraded the OS, and so it also has a new personality to go with its new brain, and so everything I try to do (merge mailing labels for a school mailing, sync the phone, etc.) takes about 50 times longer than I think it should.
Seems like pictures on other people's blogs always look better than this one that I took with my phone. Oh, well. At least you can see that's it's bread.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Giving
So as I think I said before, baking bread everyday has turned out to be the easy part. The hard part is the giving away. I now realize that I'm always afraid that even something intended as a kind gesture will be seen as intrusive or inappropriate.
I have had to fight my tendency to scuttle up to my target, ashamedly hand them a loaf of bread while muttering something about having extra bread, and running off. Not exactly in line with my intention of making friends, strengthening ties, and learning about Syracuse. For example, my idea for bringing bread to the Ronald McDonald House came from friends who had brought strawberries there once after picking more than they could eat themselves. But I don't know anything about the RMH AT ALL, other than that it seems like the parents staying there might need all the homebaked bread and freshly picked strawberries they can get. The lady at the Ronald McDonald House seemed very happy to receive the bread, but my husband and I are both surprised that a place like that, which I assume is run by a large organization with lawyers, etc., would accept bread from a stranger showing up at the door. I mean, what if I had poisoned it, and then a guest there ate some! I can't imagine why anyone would do that to people staying at the RMH, but corporations don't like to take chances. But did I ask, while I was there, if they could accept these kinds of donations and if it was actually something they encouraged so I would know next time I wanted to bring them something? I did not.
I have decided that "I made you some bread" is probably a better opening, even if I feel that it's not strictly true since I usually don't know who is going to get it when I'm making it. I'm not really telling people about my Challenge or the blog; not taking pictures of people I'm giving bread to. Just keeping track every day of what kind I make and who gets it.
In another post I'll list who's been given bread as well as my recipe, because it's wicked easy, and you should totally try it.
I have had to fight my tendency to scuttle up to my target, ashamedly hand them a loaf of bread while muttering something about having extra bread, and running off. Not exactly in line with my intention of making friends, strengthening ties, and learning about Syracuse. For example, my idea for bringing bread to the Ronald McDonald House came from friends who had brought strawberries there once after picking more than they could eat themselves. But I don't know anything about the RMH AT ALL, other than that it seems like the parents staying there might need all the homebaked bread and freshly picked strawberries they can get. The lady at the Ronald McDonald House seemed very happy to receive the bread, but my husband and I are both surprised that a place like that, which I assume is run by a large organization with lawyers, etc., would accept bread from a stranger showing up at the door. I mean, what if I had poisoned it, and then a guest there ate some! I can't imagine why anyone would do that to people staying at the RMH, but corporations don't like to take chances. But did I ask, while I was there, if they could accept these kinds of donations and if it was actually something they encouraged so I would know next time I wanted to bring them something? I did not.
I have decided that "I made you some bread" is probably a better opening, even if I feel that it's not strictly true since I usually don't know who is going to get it when I'm making it. I'm not really telling people about my Challenge or the blog; not taking pictures of people I'm giving bread to. Just keeping track every day of what kind I make and who gets it.
In another post I'll list who's been given bread as well as my recipe, because it's wicked easy, and you should totally try it.
Monday, February 6, 2012
FBC update and Intro to Treats
It is now Feburary 6, and I have so far made bread every day of February. Every day but yesterday, I have given a loaf away. Yesterday we had friends over and ate most of a loaf together, so I'm counting that.
Here are my thoughts so far:
Here are my thoughts so far:
- baking bread every day has not really been a hassle because I am doing it in a very stripped down way most days
- so far, I have not made any new friends by giving away bread
- since I often vary the variables (kinds of flour; amount of yeast, etc.) if I make one loaf in a day and give it away, I have no way to be certain if it's cooked through, if it's not as dense as a brick, etc.
- people seem very pleased to be given a fresh loaf of bread, even if you tell them you're not sure how it is because it comes out a little different every time: the pediatrician was so touched gave me a big hug
- I can overthink ANYTHING
Last winter when I first started making bread, fresh bread warm from the oven with plenty of butter was such a treat, that we would eat a bunch of it every time I made it. That, it turns out, is a really good way to get fat. Eventually, since I wasn't making every day, I got into the mindset that it would be good if we didn't run out of it right away, and so we got into the mindset of saving the bread, but not too long, because bread with no fat in it doesn't stay fresh forever. So it became a little bit of a rationing and controlling mindset about the bread. Not that I was denying anyone bread, but my approach changed from "gobble it up (and get fat)" to "save it (and end up eating some pretty stale bread)."
I realized this the first couple of days of this month when I made 2 loaves each day, so we would have one to eat and one to give away. Knowing that there would be more bread the next day really put me back in the "let's eat all the bread now!" mindset. Fresh bread became a treat again because I wasn't having a scarcity mindset about it.
But I wonder: does something you have every day really count as a treat?
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
February Bread Challenge, Day 1
I'm not going to post about this day-by-day, I don't think, because then I'd never post about anything else. But since it's the first day...
I mixed up dough for 2 loaves last night and figured out how I could come down at 5:50 when the alarm goes off, put the dough into pans and stick it in the oven. Then, using the "time bake" feature on our 1988 oven, not have to do anything else until taking it out of the oven at 7:30. This is a new routine, and that is one thing I hope to get out of this project: incentive to try new ways to bake bread--improvements, shortcuts, etc.--to see what works and what doesn't, thereby expanding my skills and knowledge. One thing I learned is that it can be hard to know if the oven's on when you're using "time bake", but if you start twiddling knobs in a panic, you are likely to turn off the oven and not realize it until later, at which point you will have no idea how long your bread has baked at what temperature. Another thing I learned is that you can turn the oven back on and guess about the time and the bread will still come out yummy.
Now, the other part of the challenge is what to do with all the bread. My lovely, generous, deserving friend Tina, whom I have mentioned before in regards to laundry, came over for tea and a visit this morning, and I thought giving her a loaf of bread would be the perfect start to this project, since the first time I met her and her partner and her daughter was when they signed up through the local mom's listserve and brought a meal to us after we had our baby after we moved here and knew no one. They are stunningly giving and ready to help other people in need. I am working on being more like them, but I have an awfully long way to go. Long story short: Tina's partner has celiac disease, and Tina thought it would take her forever to eat a loaf of bread, so we ate some together, and I'm going to give the other loaf to...someone else.
Unresolved questions re: goals and procedures for FBC: is it that I'm making bread (loosely defined as either something with yeast OR a flatbread) every day? Or is it that I am giving away bread every day? Or both? I'm not sure. And I am thinking right now I will do it every day of the month, but we'll see how I feel on the weekend. Or tomorrow. I'm not making any promises here.
And, what the heck. I'll post a picture of the bread.
I mixed up dough for 2 loaves last night and figured out how I could come down at 5:50 when the alarm goes off, put the dough into pans and stick it in the oven. Then, using the "time bake" feature on our 1988 oven, not have to do anything else until taking it out of the oven at 7:30. This is a new routine, and that is one thing I hope to get out of this project: incentive to try new ways to bake bread--improvements, shortcuts, etc.--to see what works and what doesn't, thereby expanding my skills and knowledge. One thing I learned is that it can be hard to know if the oven's on when you're using "time bake", but if you start twiddling knobs in a panic, you are likely to turn off the oven and not realize it until later, at which point you will have no idea how long your bread has baked at what temperature. Another thing I learned is that you can turn the oven back on and guess about the time and the bread will still come out yummy.
Now, the other part of the challenge is what to do with all the bread. My lovely, generous, deserving friend Tina, whom I have mentioned before in regards to laundry, came over for tea and a visit this morning, and I thought giving her a loaf of bread would be the perfect start to this project, since the first time I met her and her partner and her daughter was when they signed up through the local mom's listserve and brought a meal to us after we had our baby after we moved here and knew no one. They are stunningly giving and ready to help other people in need. I am working on being more like them, but I have an awfully long way to go. Long story short: Tina's partner has celiac disease, and Tina thought it would take her forever to eat a loaf of bread, so we ate some together, and I'm going to give the other loaf to...someone else.
Unresolved questions re: goals and procedures for FBC: is it that I'm making bread (loosely defined as either something with yeast OR a flatbread) every day? Or is it that I am giving away bread every day? Or both? I'm not sure. And I am thinking right now I will do it every day of the month, but we'll see how I feel on the weekend. Or tomorrow. I'm not making any promises here.
And, what the heck. I'll post a picture of the bread.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
February Bread Challenge begins...
NOW
To paraphrase my favorite quote from The Matrix: We're gonna need flour. Lots of flour.
To paraphrase my favorite quote from The Matrix: We're gonna need flour. Lots of flour.
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