The Great Bread Project Begins!

I am still getting the hang of blogging. It has been almost 2 weeks (arrgh!) since my last post, but not to worry. We have faithfully begun production of our bread. Here is a chronicle of our first attempt.

To begin with, we made a loaf of sandwich white bread. We used a recipe from Mark Bitman's How to Cook Everything. It is a double rise bread, meaning that you first make the dough,

let it rise

and punch it down.

Then you shape it, put it in a loaf pan,
and let it rise AGAIN, then bake it.


This entire process is easy enough with the food processor, but as far as how long it takes, well, my official estimate on that is "longer than you want." If you want bread for lunch, you need to start early in the morning. If you want bread for breakfast, you need to start the night before. If you want bread for dinner, you need to start pretty much right after you've done the lunch dishes. And, if you want enough bread for your prayer group and your family on the same day, you need to make two loaves. Except, you didn't. Not at first.

This brings us to the second bump in the road. Fresh baked bread is more delicious than store-bought sandwich loaves. My youngest child smelled it baking all morning and announced at 10:30 am that she was "hungwee." Since I had a kitchen full of women who were visiting for prayer group and lunch, I was not sure how to proceed. I knew my little one would keep up her mournful hunger cries until I sliced the bread, but lunch was 2 hours and 5 decades of the rosary away. Moreover, in my zeal to start providing all the bread around here myself, I had NOT bought any bread at the market. Of course, I was serving sandwiches for lunch and needed that bread. So, I compromised.

I told my friends that I'd put out the bread with our coffee, but we had to resist the admittedly strong temptation to eat it all. Luckily, temperance prevailed and our grilled cheese lunch was saved. A little bread was even left over. You would think my problems were solved. Happy preschoolers had snacked on fresh bread. Prayer group ladies had lunched on fresh bread. I had enough left over to feel like everyone had eaten as much as they wanted. What could possibly be wrong?

Well, let's go back to issue number one. Now we will see why bread takes longer than you want it to. Because when you make the dough the night before you want bread, anybody who is at home will see it and know bread is coming. They will plan on eating it, right from the oven, with nice butter and maybe even jam. They will not for a second consider that you may be serving it to hungry preschoolers and luncheon guests. Before they get home from school. Or work.
That's the thing about homemade bread. You can't sneak it into the house and out again without anyone noticing.

So, after my friends left, I started again. I mixed the dough, let it rise. Punched it, let it rise again, and baked it. Dinner was served, with bread still hot from the oven. And there was even enough bread left for breakfast. For exactly two of my four kids.