Accelerated Adolescence

Whole-Wheat

Last weekend, I decided that I couldn't put it off any more and decided to bake bread. Kristen and I bought yeast during the Fast to make challah with Beth, a friend of Kristen's. We've had excess yeast ever since (we bought six packets of dry yeast to make three loaves of challah). When I was little, my mother made bread for us on a regular basis. Unfortunately, out of laziness, my mother's fabulous bread would grow mold because no one wanted to go to the effort of slicing the bread. Despite not eating my mother's bread fast enough to justify regularly making bread, her bread was, and remains to this day, the best bread I've ever had.

The bread that we made last weekend was your standard white bread. Along with the bread, Hayley made brownies, and in an afternoon four people polished off the better part of two loaves of bread and most of the brownies. This weekend, fresh-breadless, I decided to bake bread again. This time I had the benefit of Kristen's wisdom; she bought whole-wheat flour. A few days ago, we began our whole-wheat experience with whole-wheat pancakes. We discovered that, while they taste very good, they are super absorbant. For a few minutes we toyed with the idea of quitting school and starting an all natural pancake based baby diaper business.

Last night, I made bread and a pizza crust with the whole wheat flour. On the pizza I put a little bit of olive oil, diced tomatoes, basil, loads of minced garlic, artichoke hearts, and mozzarella chees. We cooked the pizza a little bit more than it needed but it still tasted fabulous. Because we used a smaller than standard pizza pan (we used a 9 x 13) and let the dough rise a little, we got a fabulously thick deep crust that made the pizza more like everything good on a slice of bread than pizza. The loaf of bread was a little less successful. This week, I managed to make a much better crust than last week. Last week's bread had a crust that was too thick. This week's bread had fabulous crust and the rest of the bread is appropriately moist. Unfortunately, I attempted an experiment with oats that didn't work very well. It didn't harm the bread or its flavor, they just didn't stick. I'll have to do some more research on that.

The interesting news is that Kristen was recently given a sourdough yeast culture that is currently living in our refrigerator. It is a gift of Kristen's botany professor. However, that is another tale. Perhaps, Kristen will regale you with tales of twenty year old yeast cultures on her blog.