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[yesicanbakethat-blog]

The Catcher in the Rye (bread)

Well, dear readers, I must first back date this post to March 15, 2019. This date is notable only for being two days before St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday to which I have no connection other than an annual tradition of making corned beef. I also have very little attachment to corned beef itself, but I do have a great affinity for what comes afterwards. And you all know what that is. Reubens. 

So I ask you, what better way to tempt the yeast gods than to tell my husband, henceforth known as Reuben Fan Numero Uno, “no, dear, don’t buy the rye bread this year... I’ll make it myself.” 

... 

Of course, this does require me to go somewhat out of order in the book that shall not be named, but after going to several different stores and finding them out of the malt extract required to make the direct next recipe (i.e. wheat bread), it seemed reasonable to skip on over to Recipe 2: Eastern European Rye Bread. 

To set the tone for this post, let me say this: I will attempt to make it shorter than the amount of time it took me to bake this bread, and provide many an illustrative photo to reduce your ennui. Did I review the recipe carefully before starting this recipe, friend? No, I did not. Did I realize that it would require two extra-long rises and the creation of a bread sling and subsequent incapacitation of my favorite kitchen towel? Surely, no. Things started innocently enough: 

What a lovely slurry! thought I, after painstakingly squishing (no better word exists) solid shortening into my yeast mixture. As the recipe directed, I did use a sturdy wooden spoon (exhibit A, above) and “energy” to stir, and I felt particularly clever that I had used our long-dormant coffee grinder to grind the caraway seeds (though to say that they fit the “finely ground” description would be a lie). 

Subsequently, after adding nearly double the recommended amount of extra flour and becoming progressively more panicked over the stickiness of the dough, I eventually produced what can only be deemed the stickiest dough ball this side of Ireland: 

It gave me very little pleasure to then discover, at 8pm, that this sucker would require an hour and a half of rise... 

And I felt even less pleasure to read the next paragraph, which of course called for an additional hour of rise. At approximately 10:30pm, I had managed to produce quite the speckled specimen: 

I was again feeling quite elated with my progress, until I noted that the directions for “rolling and shaping” were not quite in keeping with my attention span or mental capability at that late hour. In fact, they were so terribly murky that I found myself compelled to create a cipher: 

OK, now to make the rectangle. Simple enough. 

We are off to a good start. Instructions then call for a “tight roll” with seams that are “pinched and sealed.” Feeling bolstered by my excellent rectangle creation skills, I manage to pinch off a lovely roll (as it were): 

I fear it went downhill from there. The subsequent directions called for me to stand this roll on its end- did I mention this was a soft and sticky dough?- and plunge my fingers down into the loaf, burrowing and tucking as I go. This was an epic failure, but I was very zealous about the final part, which instructed me to again pinch to seal (seemed a good way to cover all manner of sins, and whatever mess I had just created). 

Dear Lord... 

Mind you, we are still on paragraph one of “shaping” instructions. I was to then take this atrocity, and with it somehow create “two triangles- it’s like making hospital coners on a bed.” I will be perfectly honest in saying that I had absolutely no godly idea how I might locate a piece of dough with which to create one triangle much less a hospital corner, and so came up with the following monstrosity: 

I was pleased to discover that the next direction was a vague dictive to “plump and shape” the loaf and place it seam-side down, meaning I could cover all my errors and make it into whatever I thought it ought to look like. Which was the following: 

It’s a bit of an embarrassment. But it was already 11:15, and I was ready to bake this sucker. Wait, what’s that? No baking yet?! More resting?!? Create a sling with my kitchen towel and hang it from a doorknob from 30 minutes?!?! Can do! 

Laugh if you must, but I do think that sling did something good for the shape: 

Reader, it is now midnight. I have a rye loaf that has been rocked to sleep in its own personal sling, and I am about to create the perfect steam bath for my little rye babe in my preheated oven. Despite following every ridiculous direction to the letter to this point, I did not follow the direction to use a heavy skillet or roasting pan to create my steam bath... because who wants to lift a roasting pan at midnight, I ask you!? So when I reached into the oven and poured the water into my Pyrex, I was in for yet another unpleasant (and significantly more dramatic) surprise: 

What have we here? you ask. Well, reader, that is my 375 degree oven with 100 pieces of shattered glass in it. Laws of physics and all that. 

So despite my painstaking attempts to shape, mold, and love my rye loaf, the poor dear ended up being squashed into the toaster oven for baking while I cleaned out the regular oven. Le sigh. 

End result? Highly satisfactory! If not slightly shorter than what was intended. I will not pretend that I do not notice the terrible hospital corner situation on the left side- this is really quite embarassing, and someday I will find an individual who can school me in how to hospital corner my deflated lips pinched bread roll in the proper fashion. 

But the most important part, the reason I had undertaken the rye adventure in the first place, did not seem to be at all dependent on whether the bread had been abused during the shaping process. I was able to impress Reuben Fan Numero Uno with the world’s most hard-fought sammy the following day: 

All told? 

Effort level: 10/10  Mess level: DEFCON 1, but only because I forgot about the laws of physics.  Taste: A+

Yes, I can bake that. 

[yesicanbakethat-blog]

A journey of many bakes begins with one cell

Yeast. 

We all have baking fears, right? I seem to recall my mother warning me off souffle at a very young age, but I imagine that it’s a special kind of baking wimp who fears yeast. Yet here I am, tears welling up in my eyes at the thought of how many of these unicellular organisms I have sacrificed to the baking gods over the years. I just can’t seem to get it right. 

This brings me to the cookbook which must not be named, which I have decided I will bake my way through in its entirety, in order, and chronicle for posterity on this blog. 

Did I mention that the aforementioned book begins with 18 yeast bread recipes? Well, it does. 

Let’s get to it, then, shall we? 

Recipe 1: White Sandwich Bread a la 1984

This is not the true title of the recipe, but it should be. And this recipe, which has only 6 ingredients and is a mere DEFCON 6 on the “Cleanup Effort Scale” was a good jumping off point for yeast-phobic me! For starters, I did not feel that I needed two loaves of white bread at one time, so I cut the recipe. *Cue extra agonizing about yeast/sugar/water proportions. 

As I painstakingly measured out those several thousand sweet, innocent cells, who wanted nothing more than to excrete a little CO2 and some alcohol byproducts, I threw up some extra hopeful vibes in the direction of my baking Patron Saint... and guess what, guys? I didn’t kill the yeast! 

(This is the part where I threw up my vibes...)

Oh. My. Gosh. Guys. Something is happening. Is that- dare I suggest it- the condensation from the warm, sweet exhalations of my little yeast pals? Drunk on white sugar slurry, they sigh, ahhhhh. 

Oh shit. This is one loaf? 

OK. I guess this could be one loaf. It seemed almost a sin to deflate it after using all those vibes getting it to rise in the first place, but who am I to argue with instructions from the Cookbook that must not be Named? 

I continue to panic during the second rise. Did I squish the yeast too hard during the part where I pushed the dough into a rectangle? Would the little dudes and dudettes have preferred if I used a rolling pin instead? Did I mess up the seam at the bottom? (Natch, of course I screwed that up, because as anyone who has ever tried to reattach pizza dough to itself can tell you, it ain’t happening.) But I digress. Let the second rise continue...

Oh my gosh, guys! It’s happening again! And here is my little friend in the oven, since I got so excited that I forgot to take a picture after the second hour of rising: 

40 minutes later (recipe said 35 minutes and then stick the bottom with a thermometer to check if it’s 200 degrees internally, but forget that! Is this a thing we do? Either poke a ghastly hole in the top of your perfect loaf, or what- take it out of the loaf pan and poke the bottom- and then what?! If it says 180, put it back into the pan?! No, gracias)... 

Yes, I can bake that.