Baked

 

Tomorrow is the annual Summer Speech Spectacular, hosted by my Toastmasters club.  This event provides an opportunity for Toastmasters from any club to come and present a speech.  Four sessions and four rooms, and three speeches per session adds up to 64 speeches in one day.  In addition, there will be opportunities for people to take a role as Toastmaster, Evaluator, and Timer (one each per session).

But this post isn't about my Toastmasters event, except perhaps perifially.  Instead, I'd like to mention that folks bring goodies for participants to browse on.  It has become somewhat of a tradition over the last 8 - 10 years that I bring a loaf or two of fresh baked bread.  In the thumbnail, you can see the two loaves that came out of the oven (about an hour ago).  I have to let them cool for a bit more, and then I have some very nice paper loaf bags to put them in.

I picked up the skill of baking bread back in 2005 or 2006, while I was between jobs.  My sister used to bake bread regularly when we were teen agers, and I figured that if she could do it, I could learn.  Easy right?

I was using one of my wife's cookbooks, Betty Crocker I think.  It was a simple recipe calling for water, oil or shortening, yeast, and a bit of sugar to kick the yeast into gear.  Mix and kneed in flour until the dough is piable.  Put in a warm location for 45 - 60 minutes until the dough has doubled in size.  Take dough out and punch out any air bubbles.  Divide mass into two equal portions, and work these into loaves.    The loaves go in bread loaf pans.  Let rise for another 45 minutes, and then into the oven for 40-60 minutes at 375 degrees.

Sure its simple.  My first batch of bread came out like bricks.  My second batch came out as bricks as well.  It wasn't until my sixth batch that they came out looking like the loaves in the picture.  Batches 7 - 10 were back to bricks.  Frustrating.

Then, after carefully re-reading the directions, I released that one imporant point I had missed through all those bricks:  The temperature of the water is CRITICAL.  Per the recipe, it has to be between 120 and 130 degrees.  Use a thermometer!  All those bricks I made were because the water was too hot, and it killed the yeast, or two cold, and the yeast never activated.  Once I discovered that one simple rule, I started baking reasonably decent loaves of bread.  Not just white bread.  I've experimented with Cinnamon and Raisins, to hame a few variations.  The loaves with Cinnamon don't rise up quite as much as the white bread, but still respectable.  No, I do not use a bread making machine... not only is that the lazy way to do it, but doing it by hand is relaxing... there is a certain Zen to kneeding the dough.

For tomorrows festivities, I will be bringing a number of jars of my homemade peach jam in addition to the bread, .  I will provide one jar and a tub of butter to go with the bread, and the remainder to be distributed to lucky Toastmasters.  (For all that I am bringing eight jars tomorrow, and the fact that I have already given away at least a dozen jars at other events, I still have an ungodly amount of the stuff... maybe another dozen jars.  I even have a jar or two of LAST YEARs production!  Next year will be worse... maybe I need to get a booth at the farmer's market!)