LOOKIN’ AROUND by Syd Iwan Bread making is an old family tradition around here. Some of my earliest memories are of Mom and Grandma placing a tall square stool in the middle of the kitchen and plunking a big old bread pan on top of it. I think it was just an oversized dish pan, but it was large. From there, they added ingredients until the mixture was thick enough. Kneading followed until the dough was smooth. As I recall, they scalded some milk first off so it had time to cool. Then they proofed the yeast which involved dissolving it in warm water to which a little sugar had been added. If the mixture started to bubble and expand, that “proved” it was still good and would do the job. After milk, water, sugar, salt and Crisco (I think, or lard) were mixed together and the yeast was added, the flour was worked in little by little until the dough was elastic and of the right consistency. Next, the pan was put in a warm place, covered with a white dish towel and allowed to rise. Then it was punched down and usually made mostly into loaves, but sometimes into coffee cake, buns, or cinnamon rolls. It was at this point that I liked to steal pinches of the dough and eat it. I liked it quite a lot, but Mom and Grandma frowned if I ate too much of it. I think they suspected it would rise in my stomach and blow me apart or something. It never did, of course, but they had some bias against my eating too much raw dough. Given my upbringing, I guess it was only natural that I should take up bread making on my own once I got settled back in at the ranch after college and the Navy. I started simply and learned as I went along. With my love of experimentation, I naturally tried all different kinds of bread from sour dough to French to whole-grain and raisin. There were some disasters and some triumphs. After I’d learned all I wanted to know about the various permutations, I more or less settled down to plain old white bread that I mostly made into buns but also into cinnamon and caramel rolls. I’m still doing that whenever the freezer runs low. I have now gone more low-key, however. At first, I’d mix up a huge batch of dough using about twelve cups of flour. That would make three-dozen buns. Now I’ve become sort of lazy and throw the ingredients in a bread machine and let that contraption grind away mixing and so forth. After the dough has risen nicely in the machine and is about to be baked into a loaf, I turn the thing off, remove the dough, and make it into twelve buns. Those last me quite a while for sandwiches and eating with meals. I keep most of them in the freezer and take them out little by little so they don’t get old and dry before I get around to using them. Oddly enough, I didn’t eat a lot of bread as a kid although it was good with peanut butter, jelly and honey (all three at once) as my grandma used to make for me. Disinterest in bread at that time might be partly because I’m largely of German descent, and we tend to be into hearty meaty foods more than fluffy stuff like bread. I happened to marry a Norwegian, however, and that bunch of people thinks no meal is really complete if it doesn’t include bread. It must be a contagious attitude since it has rubbed off somewhat on me. Most of my meals now include some form of bread. The thoughts of another group of people have apparently rubbed off on me too. That would be the Bohemians or Czechs with their kolaches. These goodies are basically bits of dough with a sweet filling such as prunes, jelly, or a kind of pie filling. There are two groups of these people who do not agree with each other about the proper way a kolache is to be made. One bunch says you just put a flat piece of dough on a pan, let it rise, put a thumbprint in the dough, and fill it with sweet stuff before baking. Others are just as adamant that a real kolache is a flattened piece of dough with the filling put on top and the corners pulled up and pinched together. Both are good, but I prefer making the former since it is easier and quite fine with a topping of sour cream, sugar, and cinnamon. I make those a lot. Anyway, bread making is a satisfying endeavor. Dough is fun to work with. The whole process also makes the house smell nice while you’re at it, and the end result often tastes really good. What more can you ask?
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 12:24:02 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015