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Fresh bread in the oven...
Jan. 18th, 2005 04:53 pmLast night, I made bread dough for the first time in over a year. It's not hard at all, and it's so worthwhile, so this was an easy resolution to put on my list for this year. The recipe calls for letting the dough rise for up to 24 hours, so we made it (with D. my helpful companion) and then hid it overnight, to surprise his daddy this evening at dinnertime.
I was planning a cozy winter meal: warm bread, split pea soup. Perfect for, say, last Saturday when our high was 32. However, suddenly today we had an unseasonable warm spell. It's 67 out there now, and I'm in my khaki shorts and ultramarine tank top, and the a/c kicked on about 45 minutes ago.
So I spent most of the afternoon outside. The tulips are starting to sprout, so I hastily cleared off the weeds and dianthus that were keeping them from reaching the sun. I paced about a bit, studying all the grass in the flowerbed and wondering if I could muster the energy to dig it all out. Maybe after the iris are all sprouted so I don't damage any with the shovel. I raked more of the lawn. And then it was even warm enough to read outside, one of life's greatest pleasures. I read an article on empathy and analogy. Our new neighbor went off on a run, and I made a point to stay outside to introduce myself to her when she got back, but at that point it seemed intrusive so I did not. After the article, I read some essays by Scott Russell Sanders, in his Writing from the Center, and came across this. It's from "The Common Life," where he writes about the pleasures of baking bread, one of the kinds of gratifying work that we learn first-hand from important others in our lives:
"Eva, as I mentioned, had learned from Ruth how to make bread, and Ruth had learned from a Canadian friend, and our friend had learned from her grandmother. As Rachel and Alexandra [neighbor girls learning from Sanders' daughter Eva] shoved their hands into the dough, I could imagine the rope of knowledge stretching back and back through generations, to folks who ground their grain with stones and did their baking in wood stoves or fireplaces or in pits of glowing coals."
In my case, the rope of knowledge stretches at least as far as a bakery in Alaska; its co-owner CLB later taught me how to bake this bread when we worked together in Berkeley. I can't remember how much of this recipe is entirely his original, as I modified at least my dough-handling technique by watching Jacques Pepin, during one winter when I watched an awful lot of PBS cooking shows.
( The bread recipe )
It's in the oven now, and the new neighbor will get a warm loaf within the hour, if she's still home -- a better way of introducing myself than leaping out at her as she jogs up the driveway.
Side note: HR has done the sweetest thing! Details later.
I was planning a cozy winter meal: warm bread, split pea soup. Perfect for, say, last Saturday when our high was 32. However, suddenly today we had an unseasonable warm spell. It's 67 out there now, and I'm in my khaki shorts and ultramarine tank top, and the a/c kicked on about 45 minutes ago.
So I spent most of the afternoon outside. The tulips are starting to sprout, so I hastily cleared off the weeds and dianthus that were keeping them from reaching the sun. I paced about a bit, studying all the grass in the flowerbed and wondering if I could muster the energy to dig it all out. Maybe after the iris are all sprouted so I don't damage any with the shovel. I raked more of the lawn. And then it was even warm enough to read outside, one of life's greatest pleasures. I read an article on empathy and analogy. Our new neighbor went off on a run, and I made a point to stay outside to introduce myself to her when she got back, but at that point it seemed intrusive so I did not. After the article, I read some essays by Scott Russell Sanders, in his Writing from the Center, and came across this. It's from "The Common Life," where he writes about the pleasures of baking bread, one of the kinds of gratifying work that we learn first-hand from important others in our lives:
"Eva, as I mentioned, had learned from Ruth how to make bread, and Ruth had learned from a Canadian friend, and our friend had learned from her grandmother. As Rachel and Alexandra [neighbor girls learning from Sanders' daughter Eva] shoved their hands into the dough, I could imagine the rope of knowledge stretching back and back through generations, to folks who ground their grain with stones and did their baking in wood stoves or fireplaces or in pits of glowing coals."
In my case, the rope of knowledge stretches at least as far as a bakery in Alaska; its co-owner CLB later taught me how to bake this bread when we worked together in Berkeley. I can't remember how much of this recipe is entirely his original, as I modified at least my dough-handling technique by watching Jacques Pepin, during one winter when I watched an awful lot of PBS cooking shows.
( The bread recipe )
It's in the oven now, and the new neighbor will get a warm loaf within the hour, if she's still home -- a better way of introducing myself than leaping out at her as she jogs up the driveway.
Side note: HR has done the sweetest thing! Details later.