Bread and Boats
About 10 years ago, my mother bought us a bread-making machine, and I have to say it's just the best thing since ... well, sliced bread!
When you make your own bread, you always know exactly what's in it ... I buy stone-ground organic flour and then toss in any interesting seeds and bits and pieces I happen to have around. I usually add some of the carrot pulp from our morning vegetable juice and always a little maize to make the crust crunchy. That's all bread is really, just flour and water, a spoonful of oil (cold-pressed, virgin olive, of course), a pinch of salt and a spoonful of sweetener (I use honey or golden syrup instead of white sugar) ... Oh and one more thing ... yeast!
I've been making bread for 30+ years; originally the old-fashioned way where you wrapped the dough in a clean towel and put it somewhere warm to rise, then punched it down and let it rise again etc etc, and more recently, I've made it the much quicker way in the machine. So you'd think I'd know what I was doing by now, wouldn't you?
Mmmm.
A week or so before Christmas, I weighed out all the ingredients for my bread, tossed in eye of newt and toe of frog, switched on the machine and trotted off to my office to start work. One of the things I love about making bread is the smell ... you just can't beat that wonderful, fresh bread aroma wafting through the place. (Whenever we're selling a house, I always make sure I'm baking bread when we have inspections ... It's much more effective than coffee perking on the stove!)
So, this particular day, I was tapping away at the keyboard, on a roll (if you'll pardon the pun) when the bread machine beeped to announce it was finished. As I walked into the kitchen I wondered why I couldn't smell the bread and thought sadly that perhaps I was just accustomed to it after all this time.
I then got out my cooling rack, my oven mitts and opened the lid to reveal ...
Squinting, I peered in ... Where was my beautiful, crusty loaf that usually spills out over the top of the tin?
A closer inspection disclosed a sorry little lump huddled at the bottom of the baking tin ... and skulking behind the kitchen scales (that I'd left out for some other cooking I was planning to do later in the day) was the packet of yeast!
After a great deal of coaxing, the embarrassed agglomeration of flour and water finally emerged from the tin to land with a thud on the bench, where it sat while I pondered whether or not to try slicing it and passing it off as a quaint bread recipe I'd found on the Internet or consign it to the compost heap.
The moral of the story, boys and girls? Bread without yeast is just hard glue!
That day, I suggested we treat ourselves to lunch at the beach rather than the fresh-bread sandwiches to be eaten on the deck as I'd originally promised, so we bought fish and chips at sat by the water admiring a red, green and yellow boat bobbing on the bay.
How many boats did we see, I hear you ask?
Hard to tell from that description, isn't it? That's because you use articles (a, an, the) to indicate that nouns or adjectives are to be taken separately.
e.g. ...admiring a red, a green and a yellow boat (this indicates that there were three separate boats, all of different colours)
OR
... admiring a red, green and yellow boat (indicates that the boat was multi-coloured)
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When you make your own bread, you always know exactly what's in it ... I buy stone-ground organic flour and then toss in any interesting seeds and bits and pieces I happen to have around. I usually add some of the carrot pulp from our morning vegetable juice and always a little maize to make the crust crunchy. That's all bread is really, just flour and water, a spoonful of oil (cold-pressed, virgin olive, of course), a pinch of salt and a spoonful of sweetener (I use honey or golden syrup instead of white sugar) ... Oh and one more thing ... yeast!
I've been making bread for 30+ years; originally the old-fashioned way where you wrapped the dough in a clean towel and put it somewhere warm to rise, then punched it down and let it rise again etc etc, and more recently, I've made it the much quicker way in the machine. So you'd think I'd know what I was doing by now, wouldn't you?
Mmmm.
A week or so before Christmas, I weighed out all the ingredients for my bread, tossed in eye of newt and toe of frog, switched on the machine and trotted off to my office to start work. One of the things I love about making bread is the smell ... you just can't beat that wonderful, fresh bread aroma wafting through the place. (Whenever we're selling a house, I always make sure I'm baking bread when we have inspections ... It's much more effective than coffee perking on the stove!)
So, this particular day, I was tapping away at the keyboard, on a roll (if you'll pardon the pun) when the bread machine beeped to announce it was finished. As I walked into the kitchen I wondered why I couldn't smell the bread and thought sadly that perhaps I was just accustomed to it after all this time.
I then got out my cooling rack, my oven mitts and opened the lid to reveal ...
Squinting, I peered in ... Where was my beautiful, crusty loaf that usually spills out over the top of the tin?
A closer inspection disclosed a sorry little lump huddled at the bottom of the baking tin ... and skulking behind the kitchen scales (that I'd left out for some other cooking I was planning to do later in the day) was the packet of yeast!
After a great deal of coaxing, the embarrassed agglomeration of flour and water finally emerged from the tin to land with a thud on the bench, where it sat while I pondered whether or not to try slicing it and passing it off as a quaint bread recipe I'd found on the Internet or consign it to the compost heap.
The moral of the story, boys and girls? Bread without yeast is just hard glue!
That day, I suggested we treat ourselves to lunch at the beach rather than the fresh-bread sandwiches to be eaten on the deck as I'd originally promised, so we bought fish and chips at sat by the water admiring a red, green and yellow boat bobbing on the bay.
How many boats did we see, I hear you ask?
Hard to tell from that description, isn't it? That's because you use articles (a, an, the) to indicate that nouns or adjectives are to be taken separately.
e.g. ...admiring a red, a green and a yellow boat (this indicates that there were three separate boats, all of different colours)
OR
... admiring a red, green and yellow boat (indicates that the boat was multi-coloured)
To have your weekly dose of writing tips delivered direct to you every Friday morning, just click here: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
posted by Jennifer | 8:20 am
3 Comments:
I also have a bread machine and have been making a loaf or two of some form of whole wheat bread every week for the past couple years. Two weeks ago I put the ingredients into the machine, started it and 3.5 hours later heard the machine beep. I also love the smell of fresh baked bread and never tire of it. This time there was that familiar fragrance, but when I opened the machine (just like your experience) there was an ugly lump of stuff cowering at the bottom of the machine. The top of the mess was still in a dry powder form, the bottom a hard-gooey mess. All the ingredients were there, pretty much in the same places they were when I started the machine, because the little rudder that steers the ingredients into a loaf of bread had been forgotten. It was still sitting on the counter next to the machine!
Chuckle ...
Phew! So it's not just me!
I have a better story. After my mum finished cooking dinner, I decided to cook a snack. Two minute noodles are easy, I thought.
As the noodles softened, a strange smell hit the air. A burning smell. I looked down to realise my mistake. Mum had left her pan on the other hot-plate where she cooked the spaghetti, the plastic straining bowl on top, melting. Long white strands dripped on the stove and in both pans. What a mess!
All of them had to be replaced. The plastic was impossible to get off!
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