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Bread Making: Day 14

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It's two weeks into this poor decision and the work remains tedious. The love has decreased significantly, my extended "uggggghs" have grown louder in decibels, and the urge to throw the whole fricking thing away and slam beers has been prominent. The little hope I have that there will be something great out of all of this still remains, and my "bread trainer" has assured me that when the bread is actually made, I will have a new wave of positivity.

He was correct. 

Our stage in the game has brought us to the point where we can test the starchy waters. The time when you cross your fingers that the hard work will pay off, and that you missed all those episodes of "hoarders" for a very good reason. A reason to defecate in peace, dropping deuces without the worry of a faulty product coming out of the oven and not your lower cheeks. This time, my friends, was the time to make our first loaf of homemade bread. 

The bread trainer grabbed the starving little fucker, smelled the ferocious beast, and decided that it was semi-ready. This meaning that we could take some out, mix it with some flour and water, let it rise a bit, and throw it in the oven. A few things were working against us though:

1) Problem: The oven was way too hot, like 500 degrees hot. There was no way of lowering the temp since it was mainly used for pizzas 

Solution: Use it anyways

2) Problem: The dough wasn't rising at any rate that was considered fast. We wanted it to rise in 20 minutes, and 3 hours later we were still waiting

Solution: Throw it on top of the pizza oven, swear at it, and blame a server

3) Problem: I didn't know what the hell I was doing

Solution: Let the bread trainer do all the work

Once these problems were addressed, I watched the trainer work with the dough. He treated it very differently then I treated dough last semester, giving it a bread boot camp and working the dough until it had no life left in it. Not to mention the verbal abuse this poor dough took, it's self esteem decreasing at an alarming rate and looking like a skinny little pussy that was "trying his best." I stared intently, and waited for the final result. 

It was big, squishy, and sexy. Thrown into the oven with frustration, the bread trainer walked away and proceeded to his next task. I checked on the little guys later (there were two loaves), and a sense of accomplishment raced into my veins. The crispy golden brown outside was making my mouth water, and watching it rise in the oven brought tears to my eyes. I didn't want to cry in front of the other cooks of course because they would've called me a giant pussy. I held the tears back and thought about the bread like raising a child. Imagining it learning to read and write, ride a bike, go through puberty, get chicks pregnant, study abroad, and give wrong directions to strangers. For actual children this takes decades to experience. With my baby bread twins though, it was all happening in a matter of 17 minutes. 

We took the twins out, cut out the first piece and tried it. The outside was as crispy as chitlins, the inside was warm and dense like a temper pedic pillow, and the taste was the exact opposite of the holocaust. It brought with it new life for all of us in the kitchen, a new found hope that this wasn't a complete waste of time. That this starter had promise to make amazing bread and make a lot of people happy. 

Now, I wonder how the starter feels. Hopefully as good as us. 

 

Bread Making - End of week 1

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It has been an interesting week for the starving little fucker. His (and yes I am gonna call it a "he" to favor my own gender) hungry ass was on point with his needs, sitting in the cooler not waiting patiently to be replenished with expensive flour and non-tap water. The thought that he could possibly go a day without tender, love, and undying affection was silly at best. He was always there, squatting, watching, judging. I came to terms with his condition, and followed his tight training camp type rules with grave attention and even more detail. 

That is, until I forgot to feed him the second day. 

Yes, the second day. That wasn't a typo. I completely neglected to realize that this being "may" have been hungry, and went about my business of simply "being busy." Luckily, the boss was anticipating such stupidity from yours truly, fed the little fuckface, and followed with this:

"Now, I know this is hard for you, remembering something I told you less than 24 hours ago. This is your one 'get out of feeding' pass that you're going to get for the rest of your life. Some people wait until a very important event comes up to ask a huge favor of someone to take time out of their important day and feed this "thing." But you, you're a special cat. You get after it right away and live on the edge. Have fun with this "thing" controlling you for the rest of your days, FRIEND. Your welcome for me being a genius."

I took the news well, figuring that my idiocy was due to not caring. But now I have no choice. Forget that dog grooming seminar next week, that grand opening for the chapstick factory in New Brunswick, the 3 hours I allocated next Thursday for clipping nails, and the Sunday I dedicated to searching for the perfect Halloween costume for my puppy. My life is over. It will be constantly interrupted by this little fucker. Oh well. I guess we can get acquainted in a more intimate manner and get to know eachother. 

I started to examine the innards of my little guy and came up with several observations/conclusions:

1) This pail smells like a bag full of damp armpits

2) When you stick your hand in to mix it, all I can think about is that scene in Trainspotting when the guy takes a huge dump, realizes his drugs were in his butthole while taking said dump, and reaches into the "worst toilet in Scotland" to retrieve them. Yep, it feels like that

3) What smells like damp armpits now? My damn hand

4) When I'm deciding how to discard the innards and add fresh ones, a server waltzes up and asks what I'm doing. I explain that I'm making bread from scratch, that it's a very good skill to have, and that it's a fun and exciting learning process. I follow with a "would you like me to teach you a thing or two about it?"
They always answer, "No, I have more important things to worry about than your stupid 7th grade science project. I was just hoping there was extra food to eat back here. There's obviously not. Thanks for nothing." 
It may not be word for word with each server, but it's damn close

5) THIS. SUCKS. 

I will admit that once I'm done with the feeding, I feel like I accomplished something. An accomplishment that only a breadmaker could feel. The reward of marking off another day, like smokers quitting or those keeping track of consecutive days without showering. I also noticed that the little bastard is coming into his own, developing imaginary arms and legs and conjuring up a plan to defeat me one day. His personality is developing, and will hopefully start talking soon. I hope his first words are, "I smell."

Continue to read. I'll continue to feed. I talk in rhyme all the time. 

Bread Making Day 1

Starter

I was always intrigued by the art of making bread from scratch. The balance of chemicals to make warm, delicious carbs that give no feelings of regret like hot fudge or deep fried tentacles may give. The fact that someone completely insane was dedicated to feeding a starter everyday for almost 200 years. Well, it wasn't the same guy, obviously. 

Oh you thought it was? You just may be the reason why I haven't blogged in 3 months. Moron. 

My boss at the restaurant was kind enough to share his vast knowledge of breadmaking with me, and also offered to help me get started. He made it abundantly clear that this was not a fun project. It was nothing like building a F-16 fighter jet model, scraping gum from underneath bar tables, or soaking your feet in dead flesh eating fish water. He referred to it as "raising a child that never leaves the adolescence stage." Once you get this bad boy rolling, there is no end. No light at the end of the beer bong, and no dignity in quitting. It's like if you had made an investment in the movie "Gigli." You wanted the celebrity statue of the two stars to make the movie great but it failed like Apollo 13. The fact that you invested all your money into it doesn't mean you hang the poster in your front hallway. But, shamefully, because of the waste your life has become because of this poor, poor investment, you hang the framed poster for all to see the enormity of your non-success. Breadmaking is quite similar. 

The process starts with the right flour and bottled water. The flour has to be rye, and whole grain if all possible. The natural enzymes from the environment are what help the starter to get it's initial growth. Now this is what the boss was telling me, but this is what I heard:

'You feed this fucking thing everyday, whether you like it or not. You're going to hate me for even agreeing to show you this nightmare of a project. If you do kill me, have some respect to bury me with a loaf from one of the batches."

We combined the rye flour with the King Arthur all purpose flour with an equal amount of water. We proceeded to hand mix the starter, ending with a look of semi dry cement from the "up and coming" neighborhood. All of sudden I had this urge to pour the mixture on the floor and step on it to see what it would be like to have cement shoes like I've seen so many times on the movies. i wanted to wait until it dried up so I could kick people in the crotch and watch them look at me like I was insane. They would scream, "For God's sake man, get a new pair of shoes! My steel toes don't have shit on your sidewalk kickers!" 

Next we covered the mixture with a towel and I was told to leave it at room temp for 3 days. My initial thought was, "Phew! Don't have to feed it for three days. Cool!"

No such luck. Fuck. 

What is feeding you ask? Well, I suppose I can tell you. The starter is referred to as a starving little fucker, needing to be fed the same amount of flour and water each day. Say you put 4 cups of flour total and 4 cups of water total as the starter. The next day, and each fucking day after, you discard half of the mixture and add the same amount of the remaining mixture to what's left. So basically you're doubling what's left, so 2 cups flour and 2 cups water. Doesn't seem hard, right? 

I'll let you know over the course of the next 30 days since that's how long it takes to get a starter really good for a first batch. 

Oh don't you worry. You'll get every grainy detail. Grainy? Like the whole grain flour we used? Wordplay!