Monday, September 25, 2006

Give Us This Day, Our Daily Bread

For various reasons, we’ve been making our bread of late. Reha usually does this on the weekend, but this weekend she had both a brief and a small article to write, so the bread making duties fell to me.

No big deal. I can bake, right? It’s just following the recipe and I can do that?

Well, it turns out that though bread is a bit trickier to make than Toll House chocolate chip cookies, it’s not *that* hard. I think what makes bread tricky to make and kind of intimidating is that whole thing about yeast and letting the dough rise. But that’s just chemistry and everyone knows that chemistry is easy, right? You just have to get the temperature warm enough so the yeast bacteria begins to “eat” the glucose in the sugar and give off CO2 and cause the bread to enlarge (rise). The chemical reaction only takes place within a certain temperature band. You just have to get the temperature and sugar quantities correct. Simple, no?

Anyway, I made three loaves of tasty bread (and pretty too, oh my, look at how pretty they are!).

And just to show off, I made some butterscotch chip cookies and a batch of chocolate chip cookies as well.

And I made Crystal-Lite, but that was really easy. No skill involved, just dump the powder and fill up the jug.

OK, the funny part of this is how proud I was of my mad baking skills. I did my whole prancing and dancing around the kitchen whilst parading my loaves above my head. “Look, I have made bread! The stuff of Life! Bow before me, for I am the bringer of Life!”

And then Reha pointed out that she does that sort of thing all the time and no one is giving her medals and she’s not exploding in a fit of self-congratulation.

“But, look! I made bread!” I said somewhat plaintively and bringing it down from where I had lofted it over my head. “And cookies. I made cookies, too.”

Pause while she looks at me and my bread.

“It’s the stuff of Life,” I added lamely.

“It’s very lovely bread, Jon.”

I feel a little un-appreciated now. Is this how it feels to be a housewife?

1. I did not make any of the statements attributed to me in this post. In fact, I was not even home at the time.

   Posted by Reha Deal  on  09/25/06  at  12:30 PM

2. Liar, Liar, pants on fire.

   You were home. While maybe I took one or two liberties with your side of the conversation, (that’s entirely possible, likely in fact) let’s st least admit that I was cute and darling while doing my “I have made bread!” dance.

   And that I rock. You have to admit that.

   Posted by jon  on  09/25/06  at  07:51 PM

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