Adventures in bread baking

(Just a note to start out with, I gave the ol' blog a little face lift over the weekend. I thought a new layout was in order — the side bar was too crowded and I was just ready for a change. I hope you like it!)

This weekend I was successful in making an edible object and not a fancy baked paperweight. You can start calling me Peeta now because I am a baker of bread.

I first started fiddling with the idea of baking my own bread when Scott, Preston and I went to Little Rock during the Christmas break. We went to Boulevard Bread for lunch and to get some bread to take back home. They had a delicious sourdough among the other equally enticing loaves, and maybe it's because we don't have an equivalent bakery here, but it felt so special to eat lunch there and then take home a piece of it to enjoy there. I wanted to capture that fun little family day in our ordinary lives.

So, enter Pinterest (of course). I started searching for easy bread recipes, and this one caught my attention. It was incredibly simple. Surprisingly simple. "I might be able to do this" simple, and that's pretty simple. It's not a sourdough, though, but I'm planning on tackling that next. For that, you need what they call in the bread baking biz a "starter," and apparently it's kind of like a goldfish or a plant in that you need to feed and take care of it. That's a lot of responsibility for a beginner like myself. And I never did that well with fish or plants.

The night before I planned to bake it, I mixed all the ingredients together into a dough like the recipe said, but I made two very big mistakes. One, I bought active dry yeast instead of instant, which is apparently what the girl sharing the recipe used. Apparently you have to "wake up" the active yeast, which I did not do the first time around, so it was just sleeping on the job. Two, I interjected "place the dough in the fridge overnight" into the original recipe, which wasn't anywhere in there, and the dough needs to be warm to rise like it should. So the next morning I woke up to exactly what I started with the night before. So that initial batch was tossed.

I remedied those first mistakes on my second attempt, and this time the dough did as it was supposed to. It went into the oven, and I was pretty excited when I pulled the finished product out. The house smelled great and the bread looked like bread. To my great happiness, it tasted like bread, too — crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, great to smear butter or jelly on or just eat plain. I even got a high-five of approval from Scott, who is — undoubtably — the cooking expert in the family. It might as well be a James Beard award in my eyes.

I'm looking forward to playing with the recipe now that I've figured out the basics. There are a lot of possibilities, like red onions and rosemary, garlic and cheddar, or cinnamon sugar and vanilla! I encourage you to try out this recipe if you're interested. Bread baking isn't as scary as I thought.

Super easy bread recipe

Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon yeast
- 1 1/2 cups water (I needed a bit more to moisten everything)

First, combine all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl. If you have dry active yeast like I did, activate it according to the package instructions rather than adding it here. Include the yeast and its water into the rest of the water and add to the dry ingredients, combining until there is no dryness.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave out for 12-18 hours. The dough will have grown a sizable amount in that time.

Remove the dough from the bowl onto a well-floured surface and form into a ball. Cover it once again with the plastic wrap and let it sit for 30 minutes while the oven and the dish you plan to bake it in preheats to 450 degrees. I used my Le Creuset dutch oven.

Remove the baking dish from the oven and carefully place in the dough. Cover it with a lid and bake for 30 minutes. Then uncover and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes or until brown and toasted on top.

Take the loaf out of the baking dish and allow to cool on a wire rack or dive in and eat right then!

Weekend 1-2-3

1. Scott's mom and grandmother are coming to visit this weekend. We haven't seen them since Thanksgiving, and I know they're antsy to see Preston. It's incredible how much he learns just in a week, so he's got a lot more "tricks" than he did then, including saying "Hey, baby!" when he sees me (Scott taught him that one).

2. Lately, I've been wanting to attempt baking bread. As cold as it's been, there's something very comforting about the idea of filing the house with the smell of freshly baked bread and serving it up with a bowl of soup and a blanket. So, I'm going to try it this weekend. Maybe it won't go too poorly.

3. I finished Allegiant a few days ago (verdict: so-so), and the next book on my list is The Fault in our Stars. I've heard a lot about it, and it's hugely popular (a movie is in the works). Maybe it won't disappoint me like Allegiant did.

Have a family-filled, carb-loaded, novel-reading weekend!

I've got the (winter) blues

Allow me to explain my unintended two-week break.

After the holidays pass, I get a little blue. I can handle winter when there's Christmas to look forward to and all of the excitement it brings, but once the tree is put away and it's back to regularly scheduled programing, I'm ready for spring to arrive.

Luckily, this winter cloud of sadness has a silver lining this year: the Olympics. I have loved the Olympics since I was young, alternating between dreams of becoming an Olympic gymnast or a figure skater every two years. I love the pride each country shows during the opening ceremonies and the amazement on the faces of the athletes marching into the stadium. It's like the whole world stops what its doing for a moment and celebrates each other and the spirit of competition.

I was especially thankful for the last summer Olympic games in London. They began right after I returned to work from maternity leave, and they gave me something to look forward to when I was upset about being away from my little guy for a good chunk of the day. After work, Scott, Preston and I would curl up on the couch and get in some snuggle time and watch beach volleyball and the high dive.

So, with the Olympics to buoy my spirits, here's to making it through these weeks of winter. Who knew bobsledding could be such a mood lifter?

(P.S. This winter blues thing gets me every year. Here's one post I did on how to beat the winter doldrums a couple of years ago.)

Best of 2013

Lots of things happened in 2013. Big, life-changing, exciting things along with stressful, hair-pulling, crying things, too. Our little guy turned one and started walking (video evidence below), we moved, I graduated with my master's and taught a class, and we traveled a little and laughed a lot. 2013 was a good year, indeed.

As for what 2014 holds, we'll just have to wait and see. I've given up on resolutions of the "Run a 5K" or "lose 10 pounds" variety. Instead, I'm swapping the R-word for goals, and my goals for this year are to do my best to daily reflect Christ in my life, embrace a positive outlook and not allow negativity to work itself into places it doesn't belong, and focus on making time for the truly important things and not let the unimportant ones take over. They're vague and unmeasurable — the hallmark of a terrible resolution, I know — but it's more about shaping myself into a better person than checking off a list, I think.

Happy 2014!