Too much of a good thing

This weekend I had gotten the kitchen somewhat cleaner than I usually do, so I decided it would be nice to bake some bread. The weather was nice, not too humid, and not too cool — just right for baking bread. I thought I could mix up the batch of dough and while it was on its first rise, Simon and I could go for a nice little bike ride. When we returned, I could get him in bed, and then finish up the bread. It was about 4:30 pm when I started getting the ingredients together.

I found I needed a few things for the recipe, so I packed Simon up and we headed off to the grocery store. I knew I had enough whole-wheat flour to complete the recipe, but this little voice inside me asked me to consider buying another five lb. bag — so I wouldn’t be totally out of flour when I was done with this batch of bread. When I saw the price I decided against it. Boy would I regret that! I also recalled that the last time I baked this bread I bought two half-gallons of milk from Walgreen's. So that's what I did at this store, I bought two half-gallons of milk. Simon was climbing everywhere and not listening to my corralling efforts as I tried to remember what else I had needed. I grabbed a pound of butter and dragged Simon to the checkout counter with me. I wouldn't buy him the candy-coated super sugar breakfast bites that he so coveted and there was no mistaking his extreme disappointment as we left the store — In fact, I'm sure everyone in the store could hear how disappointed Simon was.

It had been a while since I made bread and I wanted to make sure the yeast I had in the fridge was still viable. I had read a few recipes that talked about testing the yeast before going to the expense of making the dough only to find that it was dead and your loaves could now only be used to construct that patio in your backyard. I ripped the packets open and stirred them into a teacup of warm water. The little yeasties started to expel their gas right away, so I knew I had good yeast. Excellent.

The only problem with this whole "testing the yeast" idea was that the recipe I was going to use called for dissolving the yeast in half of the cold milk and then adding the other half of the milk warmed to the solution. Now with the yeast activated and happy in the warm water, I worried that if I put it into the cold milk like the recipe dictated I would kill the now happy and thriving yeast. I decided I'd better warm up all the milk and just skip the first part where I dissolve the yeast in one quart of cold milk. I quickly poured the other half-gallon into a pan and warmed it on the stove and added it to the first cold half-gallon in the bowl. Wow, that bowl was really full of milk, I didn’t remember it filling the bowl quite that much. Did the bowl get smaller? Oh well, my memory is really starting to fade lately, so I disregarded that confusion as just bad recollection — cranial cobwebs.

I quickly put the yeast in and it still seemed to thrive — I could see the bubbles forming. I started adding the whole-wheat flour. It wasn’t thickening up like I remembered it had the times I'd used this recipe before. I decided to check the recipe. Two quarts of milk! Not two half-gallons of milk! Yikes! Now I’d need ten pounds of flour instead of five. I recalled my little intuitive voice talking to me earlier at the grocery store and me blowing it off. Now it was giggling over in the corner watching my face shrivel with disappointment. I only had so long to keep the yeast alive. Now I had a bowl full of milk, yeast, and flour, but not enough flour to make dough. What could I do?

I started grabbing stuff like wheat germ and oatmeal and generously adding it to the mixture to try to create bulk, trying to dry it up a bit, but it hardly had any impact. I used all the oatmeal, and all the wheat germ but still had soup instead of dough. I couldn’t avoid it; I had to get more flour some how! My mind started racing. I really needed to get to the store or I’d have a disaster on my hands, not only the expense of the lost ingredients but the lost bread! We’d still need to buy bread after I’d tossed all the milk, wheat germ, oatmeal, and flour.

The first time I went to the store, Simon was already climbing all over, asking for this and that, fussing and generally being pesky. So I really wasn’t up for the challenge of dragging him back to Copps’ just to buy a bag of flour. I thought about my neighbors. They are so nice, but I am always asking them for things. This was just too much. My friend who lives on the next block might have some, but she’s always busy with her kids, I didn’t want to put her out. Then I thought that maybe Walgreen’s would have some flour, it would probably be expensive, and probably not be whole-wheat, but then again, I could just run out there quick while Simon sits mesmerized by the Maisé DVD. So that’s what I decided to do. Walgreen’s is only around the block. I went as fast as I could. When I returned, Simon still sat silently in the chair, his gaze fixed on the television set. It was now around 6:30 pm.

I took the $2.69 bag of All-Purpose White flour and started pouring it into the bowl. At one point I had to transfer half of the mush over to a second bowl because I no longer had enough room to stir in the flour. I put the rest into the mixing bowl of my new KitchenAid Expensive mixer that hasn’t been used since I bought it — and I've been wondering why I bought it, it seems so extravagant — could this be the reason? (That’s another story.) I put the dough hook in and ran it on low while I stirred the second bowl adding more and more flour to the sloppy concoction. What a sticky, gooey, mess!

By this time the table, bowls, walls, and floors had some form of dough on them. Clouds of flour dust filled the air and I wondered how I'd ever be able to clean this gargantuan mess up! I was worried I'd end up with a strange form of wall paper paste instead of bread dough. In that case I'd have to rush out and pick out some paper and start redecorating instead of baking bread.

Eventually the dough became stiff enough to turn out onto the table. So I scraped it off the sides of the bowl and onto the tabletop. I started kneading it and it was really wet, but eventually it became like good dough should be—soft and not sticky. Meanwhile the dough in the blender kept turning. I added more and more flour to that. After about ten more minutes it too became the right consistency to turn out onto the table and knead into dough. I was happy that at least I’d gotten it this far!

I gently placed the two dough blobs into greased bowls for the doubling in size rise. I put damp towels over them to try to avoid the dough drying and crusting over on the top where it is exposed to the air. But right away they became cool and I think the cool damp towels impeded the yeast from rising because after an hour there was no real progress with the rise. So I replaced the damp cool towels with dry ones and turned the oven on the lowest that it would go, opened the oven door, shut the kitchen windows, and waited for the dough to start doubling in size. It's now about 8:30 pm, Simon's bedtime. No bike ride tonight.

It really took a long time to see any significant enlargement of the dough. By this time Simon was in bed sleeping. I was trying to stay up by watching some crummy TV show. Finally around 11 pm I could see some real progress and decided to punch the dough down and put it in the pans for the second rise before cooking. This turned out to be a little challenging because I didn’t’ have enough bread pans. I had eight loaves and four pans. Fortunately I had two small pans usually used for banana breads and then I managed to let two loaves rise outside the pan. By about 11:45 the first six were ready to bake. Once in the oven they rose and crusted nicely. They were cooking very well. The last two loaves had to wait to go into the oven until 12:30 am. They didn’t do as well, but they are edible.

So now I seem to have too much of a good thing. All because I was a little too worried about the yeast. I set my mind towards saving the yeast and almost lost the whole batch of dough. I also lost a whole night with my son Simon, because it was too late to go on the bike ride when I finally set the dough out to rise.

Alas, I learned once again the folly in preoccupation with one particular aspect of an operation. I got so involved with worrying about losing something small that I ended up losing many more precious things while my head was turned. I’ll never have that time with Simon back, that’s what I should’ve been coveting, and not a silly packet of yeast or even a batch of bread.

So you can just call me the oaf with the loaf.