Apocalypse Cookbook
BREAD, ATTEMPT 1: EPIC FAIL
Ah, bread. the staff of life. The staple of the table for millenia. From the humble, crusty cakes made in the nile delta to the fine artisnal bread in the upscale bakeries of today, bread knows many forms and many flavors. I'm not a bread eater, really, and by that I mean I don't see the reason for a basket of bread on the dinner table. I think it's a waste of room in my stomach when there is a big, bloody hunk of meat on my plate that needs tending to. And I am really baffled at the notion of serving bread with pasta. Not enough starch for ya? But, I love bread as something, as a sandwich, as toast, anytime before dinner, bread is the shit.
As part of the Apocalypse Cookbook, I know bread will be of the utmost importance. Cheap, simple and filling. I was salty about that whole Adkins movement a few years back, where bread became the enemy. Oh, please. If bread was so horrible, then why did centuries of people around the world live off the stuff? A chunk of hearty bread is just the thing for someone who's threshing wheat in the fields all day, or banging on an anvil in front of a raging fire. Two slices of shitty, sugary Wonder Bread, slathered in jelly and peanut butter which consists of 80% corn syrup, fed to a fat kid slurping Powerade in front of an X-box...ok, I see how THAT bread is PART of a problem. My bread, however, is going to be just like they used to do it, hand-kneaded and left to rise in a bowl, baked until the crust is crisp, and then spread with home-churned butter, or served with a wedge of sharp imported cheese and ripe berries....yummmmmm. So, I set about the task.
Well.....Epic Fail. The recipe instructed me to sit the dough in a bowl and cover it and wait for it to rise. I came back to find it very much the size it was when I left it. Having been through all the work, I decided to pop it into the oven and bake it anyway. The result was pretty brutal. The loaves puffed up and got a nice, crispy crust. The inside was like a solid mass of semi-firm dough, like the consistency of really shitty, cheap cookies. The taste wasn't bad, and I tried to convince myself that it was edible. As it was still warm from the oven, it was arguably edible. When it cooled, however, I couldn't have argued the deliciousness to a homeless guy that hadn't eaten in three days. I relinquished the fail-bread to my woodland friends who occupy the dense brush along the fence behind the building.
BREAD, ATTEMPT 2, YEAST-A-PALOOZA: EPIC FAIL
I decided the batch of yeast must have been dead, which happens. I checked the expiration date and it was good for another year, but every now and then you get a bum batch. No harm, no foul, I might have spent a dollar on the stuff, so I picked up more, along with the graham-cracker crust for the banana cream pie I would be trying out. Yeah, I know, store-bought crust, graham cracker crust sucks ass to make. But I digress. So, with the new yeast, I headed home and started again, this time with a different recipe. This one was more simple and seemed to make more sense. The last recipe called for brown sugar, which I was skeptical about, and had the rise time as fifteen minutes. The new recipe was only yeast, flour, water and salt, and had a rise time of an hour or more. I thought that seemed more reasonable. The other good part was that in the new recipe, you put the yeast in the water first, activate it, and THEN you add the rest of the stuff. So you'll know if you have bum yeast before you bust your ass kneading out bread dough for ten minutes.
I add the yeast to the water. It has to be a certain temperature, too cold and it won't activate, too hot and you'll kill the yeast. I was guessing the temperature because I didn't have a thermometer. First batch of yeast, nothing. I dumped it out. Second, same thing. I was wondering, on a lark, could it be the metal bowl? I tried it in plastic. Nothing. Aggravated, I cleaned up and went to bed.
BREAD, ATTEMPT 3, FUCK YOU, FRENCHY: EPIC FAIL
I now know the following about breadmaking:
1. Yeast, on the whole, is a smelly bastard organism that I would punch in the face if it were a person.
2. Kneading bread dough gives you rad triceps.
3. They aren't kidding when they say "Cooking is an art, baking is a science".
I admitted to myself that if I was going to do this I was going to have to get scientific about it. I went and got a meat thermometer. On the heating of the water to the correct temperature, I realized that 120 degrees farenheit is a lot hotter than I thought it was. That water was steaming and I knew at once I must have been using water that was much too cold. So that would be #4 of things I now know about breadmaking: My finger is NOT to be trusted to give an accurate temperature reading. However, I poured it into the bowl and stuck the thermometer in and the temperature began to drop quickly. In an attempt to keep it warm, I put it on the stove, close to a low burner and the temperature hovered at about a hundred degrees. The yeast is supposed to sit in the water "until bubbly". I never got bubbly, just a sort of weird wavy pattern at the bottom of the bowl, like waves etched into the sand on the beach. Well, it was different than the flat, beige brothy stuff I got before, so I decided to give it a go. I made the dough, dropped it into a bowl and went and broke my ass on Turbo Jam for an hour. I came back to find the same little greasy wad of dough I had left an hour ago. I gave it another hour. Nothing. Shit. Well, I had made the mess, taken the time, and if you've not kneaded dough for ten minutes straight, you wouldn't understand my mad determination to make this work. So I stuck it in the oven. I was beginning to feel like Dr. Frankenstein, screaming for this ugly, misshappen thing on the metal slab to "LIVE!!!! LIVE, DAMN YOU!!!!"
Out of the oven came another beautifully crusted loaf of wet concrete. Curses!!!!! I ranted on the phone to the boy about today. I was especially pissed because the strawberry jam from the other night had come out beautifully and I was dying to slather a slice of warm, fluffy bread in rich, berry goodness. He said to me, "You ought to try making it in the morning."
"What?" I snapped. Like yeast knows what time it is. I do everything after ten pm. That's my prime time.
"No, really," he continued, in that soothing philosopher's tone of his. "Bread is born in the morning and broken at night. There's something in the air then, you're in the moment and calm, and nothing is going on, it's just you and the work..."
He had a point. As I was making the dough, I was simultaneously making porcini risotto and writing a paper on step 2, as ordered by my sponsor, oh, six months ago? Maybe that's it, there is a rhythm and a ritual to breadmaking, one that requires focus and calm, maybe the bad energy scares the yeast or something.
Either way, I feel bad now for scoffing at people who buy breadmakers. I don't like the idea of that because you're using this shitty bread mix in a box that's all processed and whatnot, if you're going to do it that way, you might as well just buy a loaf of bread. I'm about it for the experience, the work, the calming effect of the preparation which is the main reason I bake in the first place. I can't see me dragging around a breadmaker in the post-apocalypse wilderness, either, I need to be practical and get this right. So, I'm all jacked up on chai tea now, I'm going to head home and try it again. And if I fail, I fail, gotta keep trying, I'll get it right eventually.
Or else there is going to be a 50-pound possum stalking the backyards of Church Street.