It is only right that I present a fair and unbiased view of my baking abilities, as difficult as that may be. Like all of us, I want to be seen as a success, but alas, that is not always the case.
Yesterday, I baked a brick.
Since I started this little bread baking adventure two months (!) ago, I've baked at least two dozen loaves of bread from nine of Bernard Clayton's recipes in New Complete Book of Breads as well as my usual sourdough recipe. Up until yesterday, they'd all been quite lovely. Not all perfect, but that's okay. They were all definitely more than edible. Yummy even.
I didn't have the ingredients I needed for the next loaf in the book (more on that in the next post), so I decided to revisit the 30-Minute Loaf. I declared it a favorite when I baked it back in mid-January, and I remembered it as quick and easy, perfect for when I just needed a loaf of bread but didn't want to put too much into it.
Since it was just a stop-gap loaf until I baked the next recipe in the book, I decided to make just one loaf, and so I halved the recipe. In and of itself, that shouldn't have been a problem. I was also feeling a little lazy, so I decided to let my Kitchen Aid mixer do all the work - the mixing and kneading. I have done this successfully before, but for this project I've done all the mixing and kneading by hand.
I followed the recipe, triple-checked that my halved measurements were all correct, and carried on. After the appropriate amount of kneading, I pulled the dough from the mixer bowl and shaped it into a loaf. For this recipe, the dough only rises once - in the pan. I thought it felt a little cool, but carried on with turning the oven on to 400 degrees for one minute, then turning it off and letting the dough rise for 30 minutes.
Rising was the plan, anyway. After half an hour, there was no evidence of bubbly, yeasty activity. Hmph.
I baked it anyway, hoping that perhaps it would rise a little as the oven warmed.
Nope.
Forty minutes later, I had a flour brick. I sliced off the tiny heel and slathered it with butter. Bleh. It didn't even taste good. Not terrible, but just not right.
My hubby suggested maybe it would be okay for bread pudding.
I'm not quite sure what went wrong. When I took the dough out of the bowl, it felt cold and dead. Maybe my water hadn't been hot enough for mixing in a metal bowl. I'd just opened a new jar of yeast - maybe it was no good.
Maybe it was just one of those things. A setback designed to keep me humble.
A friend recently tagged me in a post of an article called "Be Brave Enough - 6 Reasons Why Failure is Actually Good for You." The reasons included: you learned something, you did something, it boosts your empathy, it makes you humble, it is motivating, and success isn't always a good thing. I'm not sure all of these apply to this current situation, but perhaps I needed a reminder to be humble, especially since another friend thought I should apply to be in the American version of The Great British Bake-Off. I know I'm not that caliber of a baker, but I had gotten pretty cocky about my bread baking.
Now I'll go back to hoping the next batch works and remembering that every risen loaf is a tiny miracle. Fungal-driven humility. Maybe it could be the next big thing for over-stressed executives.
