The original post by Natalie the Singingfool can be found at Play the Tape Through
I wiped a dribble of sweat from my brow, and as I pulled my hand away, I noticed that I had just smudged flour on my face.
“Shit,” I muttered. Not that I really cared at this point, I just wanted to get the damn bread in the oven. Company would be over any minute now, and I had just set it out to rise, which it needed to do for at least another forty minutes.
It had started with one of my “brilliant ideas,” the ones that come to me when I’m way too busy and I suddenly get the urge to rip out a patch of lawn and plant a random lavender bush when I should be packing for a trip, cleaning the house for the impending arrival of company, etc. “No, this will totally work! I completely have enough time to grocery shop, clean the house, make dinner, and then bake bread from scratch!” I exclaim like a wide-eyed cult member, when I should be playing the tape through to the end…
…the end that always has me covered in sweaty gobs of flour, waiting for the bread to rise when it should have gone in the oven by now.
Relaxing afternoon baking? Hardly.
I successfully got the vegetables in the oven, and then checked the clock. By the time they were done I would be able to adjust the oven temp, but the bread would still need to rise for forty minutes, and by then dinner would be ready.
I peeked under the dishcloth, willing the bread to have magically doubled in size through mysterious kitchen alchemy.
Shit. Well, it had risen for about twenty minutes now, wasn’t that enough? Wouldn’t the bread have done what it needed to do in that time period? Shoot, I don’t even take twenty minutes to get ready for work in the morning. Twenty minutes was an eternity in my hectic life.
Bread doesn’t really need to rise, does it?
I threw it in the oven.
After the elapsed time period and the ding of the timer, it smelled heavenly, like crusty golden flakiness. I opened the oven, and…
…it looked pretty anemic. It looked flat, too. I gave it another ten minutes.
It looked the same. I pulled it out and poked at it.
Yep, rock hard. When I sliced it open, no spongy inner core greeted me. In fact, “sliced” is not the correct verb – I should have used the electric knife to carve that sucker, as it required the upper body strength of a pro-wrestler to hack the loaf in half.
The worst part of this whole story? I took baking classes. I know that even enjoying simple pleasures takes time; time that I don’t have, I guess.
This? No, my bread did not look like this.
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Linking up with Yeah Write for their 100th birthday celebration! Woohoo, party time! Excellent!
I’ve had too much coffee. And I’m a nerd.
