Making Our Own Fun

Summer is officially here! It came earlier this afternoon, and I for one could not be happier. The sun is out, my roses are blooming, a warm breeze is blowing, and best of all, my kids are home with me for long stretches of unstructured time. During the school year, I spend a lot of time driving my children to school and to after-school activities. On top of that, there are homework assignments to supervise, tests to help study for, lunches and snacks to pack, clothes to lay out, baths to give, and in general a lot of real tasks that we need to fit in between the hours of "school's out" and "lights out".

But then comes summer, glorious summer, full of long sweet sunny hours when we can dive into the kinds of fun adventures that don't always seem to fit into the school-year calendar. You already know we're happily baking bread and bagels and everything else we can dream up. But maybe you didn't know we all are art lovers too. We like painting and drawing and even coloring (some of us love coloring!) and we especially like art supplies. In fact, we like them so much that we decided to try and make some of our own.

Inspired by Trish Kuffner's fabulous book The Preschoolers' Busy Book we set out to make our own crayons. Well, "make" may be too ambitious of a word, perhaps "mold" is more accurate. At any rate, this is what we did.

First, we got out the mini-muffin tin and greased it with canola oil. Then, we rounded up all our old broken crayons. Believe me, we had a lot. We peeled them, broke them into small pieces, and then dropped the pieces into the cups of the muffin tin. We set the tin in the oven at 350 degrees for 3-4 minutes. When the crayon wax melted we pulled the tin from the oven. We let the tin cool and then popped our new cool round crayons out.

And....They really work! When you color with them they make very cool varigated swirls of color on your paper. They are just the right size for little hands. And they come with great "Look what we made!" bragging rights, proudly exercised upon all visitors.

Two Breads Are Better Than One

This time I made enough dough for 2 loaves of bread, the night before we wanted it. I also made dough for bagels, but that's my next post. I used Mark Bitman's recipes for both doughs. Measure, mix, whir in the food processor, and presto-gorgeous, smooth, pliable dough! I have to say I love making bread dough. It's so simple and so satisfying.

I put the dough in bowls, went out for a board meeting, and punched it down when I returned. Then, I went to bed, letting it rise overnight in the bowls. This morning, I took it out, put ithe bread dough into loaf pans my little son had proudly greased for us, and had to let it rise AGAIN, because it has to go into the over risen. Otherwise, you end up with brick, not bread. (Trust me, this is the voice of experience). So, add another 45 minutes to the moring baking plan, over and above the 45-50 minutes I'd already planned for the baking. (We waited patiently though, and used the waiting time to form our bagels.) So, here's the lesson learned. If you make bread dough the night before and it goes through its first rise before you go to bed, punch it down and put it in a loaf pan. It will have its second rise overnight and be ready for the oven in the morning.

When the bread was ready, we slid it into the oven. Pretty quickly, the kitchen filled with the yeasty aroma of baking bread. It lured my older son down the stairs. He looked around the kitchen hopefully and then, not seeing any asked "Did I miss it?"

Well, no. Unlike the bakers at real bakeries, our baker has not gotten the knack of when to do what steps to put bread on the table for breakfast. When it was ready, at 10:50 am, here is what breakfast looked like.



What we make is delicious, but it sure takes a while.

Bagels!

After our success with the bread we decided to dive right in and tackle bagels. My kids love bagels. I usually buy frozen Lender's ones, but, wouldn't fresh ones be somehow nicer? Well, these enquiring minds wanted to know.

Here's what we've learned so far.Bagel dough and bread dough are pretty similar. Both contain flour, yeast, salt, a sweeetener (we use honey but sugar or maple syrup are also good), butter, and a liquid. The 3 main differenced between our bread recipe and our bagel recipe (both by the famous Mr. Bitman) are

• our sandwich bread dough uses milk, our bagel dough recipe called for water
  
• the bread uses 2.5 tsp yeast per 3.5 cups of flour and the bagels only need 1 tsp per 3.5 cups of flour
  
• the bread uses 1Tb of sweetner, the bagels take 2Tb
  

Like the bread dough recipe I use, the bagel dough can be (and is, at our house) made in the food processor. It is so simple and quick, you can have dough in about 4 minutes. Bagels, though, take a while.

After you make the dough, you have to let it rise. Punch it down, let it rest 10 minutes, and then separate it into little equal balls of dough. I used 3.5 cups of flour, which gave me 28 ounces of dough. So, 14 little balls, er, bagels-in-waiting.



Next step. Form the little balls into little bagels, either by flattening them and poking a hole in the center, or by rolling them into little logs and joining the ends to make circles.


Then-you guessed it-let them rise again. For about 30 minutes.

Next comes the famous 2 stage cooking process, boiling and baking. Bring a pot of water to a full boil. Drop a few bagels in, watch them sink and then float to the surface.
Cook for one minute, flip, cook one minute longer.

Then, fish them out of the water and place them on a rack to dry.

This step will make the bagels puff up and take on a funny consistency that is firmer than the dough but also sort of gluey. Don't panic. This is also what makes the bagels chewy.

Last but not least, put the bagels onto a cookie sheet and slide them into a PREHEATED 400 degree oven. I'm capitalizing to EMPHASIZE this, because otherwise you will do MORE waiting around. You've had plenty of time to preheat while you were rising, forming, and boiling! Bake for 20-25 minutes, and enjoy.

Which we did. My kids all happily tucked into the bagels, with butter and cream cheese. I heard "Delicious!"
and "Oh Mama, these are so good!" and "Thank you!" My favorite compliment, though? "These taste just like real bagels".

Why yes, they do. And they look like them too.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my little brother's birthday! Umm, I mean, my younger brother's birthday. He prefers the second, more accurate term because he's half a foot taller than me or more. But, I guess I'll always think of him as littler than me. And since I'm the older sister, and mom's not here right now.... I guess that puts me
in charge of this particular choice....

Growing up, we did just about everything togther. We played together, swam together, rode our bikes together. We went to school together. We fought together. We travelled together, seeing Washington D.C., Disney World, and every single state on the Eastern seaboard together. When he went away to summer camp I went down to visit him. When I went to college I kept cokes in my fridge for when he came to visit me, and I don't even drink Coke. We were in each other's weddings and are godparents to each other's firstborn children.

We talk on the phone together. A lot. He calls me. I call him. (although he's way better than I am at figuring out the differences in our time zones). If I want to tell someone about some funny or cute thing my kids did, I call him. If I just want to hang out with him, I call him. He's funny and fun and smart. You couldn't ask for a better phone pal. Or brother.

Our mother says that when she brought him home from the hospital I looked at him and said, "Oh, thank you mummy, thank you!" That pretty much sums up how I still feel about him today. His birth was one of the great blessings of my life.

So, here's to you kiddo! May God bless you today and always.

Happy birthday!

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.