Hey there. I promise this will be the last bread / yeast post for a little while. Can you tell I have been obsessed with this?
I am thinking that Wednesday night / Thursday morning will work out best as my baking day. I have the least number of other obligations (i.e. driving my kids to and from stuff) during that time. It might not always work out, but knowing you need to use the start or loose it provides that extra bit of motivation when you don't particularly feel like putting in the time to bake. Last night I got home about 9:30 from a Relief Society thing. Luckily, the kids had followed through with dinner dishes and the kitchen was relatively clean, so I didn't face a 45 minute chore BEFORE diving into the process of making our bread. I still had to make kids' lunches...but nothing major. After getting the kids to bed, I started in making my dough. I had previously set out my yeast start to "warm up" (come to room temperature from the fridge). I could tell my start was in beautiful form this week: frothy on top, thick and full of bubbles inside, and sweet smelling. I had ground about 6 cups of wheat earlier in the evening, so I set straight to work mixing by hand. This time I added a little agave to the recipe too. I found that doing my kneading when the kids are in bed is ideal. I didn't have to contend with continually running to rescue, contain, comfort or entertain anyone (with my hands covered in sticky dough). It was me and my dough. I did wonder if the highly-recommended smack-down kneading technique I have been trying to perfect might bring the kids running upstairs to see what was going on. (It is SO loud.) I turned on a PBS Nova episode on Amazon Prime (like I said, it was ME time), smacking and kneading away... and before you know it, the dough was a lovely, soft ball, ready for proofing. I left it in an oiled bowl with oiled plastic wrap over the top. I thought up a genius way to keep the dough warm enough to rise over night (we turn the thermostat down a bit at night...). I grabbed a reading lamp from the office desk...one with a 40 watt bulb...and pointed in down over my dough bowl, and left it to do its thing.
This morning the dough was ready for shaping (btw, I have never seen loaves formed the way I learned to do it from my bread book. It's more like folding laundry than baking bread. I was kind of skeptical at first ..but seriously, it works!). Two more hours of raising under my little bread lamp, 25 minutes in the oven, and BAM! Bread. Perfect, natural yeast bread. Feast your eyes:
Not sour. Not dense. Just full of fluffy love. Also, SUPER healthy, and fully digestible.
I had to use up more of the start than the bread required, so I also tried some yeast pancakes. The recipe called for a proofing period too, but who plans ahead 10 hours to make pancakes? More like 10 minutes for me. So, I wouldn't feed them to someone with a gluten intolerance... but man, were they tasty! (A side note. The book also had a recipe for yeast start pancakes with just this one ingredient: yeast start. I should try those too. That would work for gluten intolerant people who don't plan breakfast 10 hours ahead, because the start is already "proofed"). The recipe included some Kefir, which I had in blueberry flavor in the fridge. They were SO deliciously perfect.
What will Millie (my start) and I do next?
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