Get Even More Visitors To Your Blog, Upgrade To A Business Listing >>

The Bread and Butter of Quarantine

Tags: bread recipe loaf
It's been over 20 years since I've made bread from scratch. During quarantine, all I had was a package of three-month-old expired yeast, and wouldn't you know every store in town was out of yeast. What I learned in this experiment is don't believe every yeast packet you read.

Baking Bread has never been my thing. I could never quite put my finger on why it just didn't have the same appeal for me like baking a batch of cookies or a cake from scratch. Perhaps I didn't have the patience to let the dough rise. Perhaps I didn't enjoy the kneading of the bread, as it made my wimpy wrists hurt and give out.

In swooped the 1990s with the invention of the bread machine. An odd-looking contraption that took up counter space. The machine made it as simple as dumping in the ingredients (and sometimes from a mix) and then sitting back watching the machine stir, knead, and bake.  The machine also created a smell of hot fresh bread giving us the cue to bring out the butter dish and a jar of jam. It also made it too easy to have a daily hot loaf of bread making us put on the weight. 

At the beginning of the quarantine as I looked around on social media it seemed as if the trend around the nation was to make and bake bread and even make bread from your own fermented stash of sourdough. I didn't feel like mixing flour and water together and waiting for a week for the wild yeasts from the air to kick in and start its bubbling action. I also didn't feel like dusting off the old bread machine. 

It just so happened that during quarantine, I found a new hobby. I got hooked on watching YouTube.  I was amazed at the talented content creators. There were more than just videos of silly cat tricks and old White Snake rock n' roll videos. There were creators of cooking and sharing recipes, gardening, herbologist, journaling, bookbinding, papercrafts, soap making, and even making natural salves from herbs and flowers from their gardens. 

Several YouTube creators were sharing their favorite tried and true bread recipes, but none of them seemed different than the old recipes I had collecting dust - and then one day I found it. I found the recipe that would not ask me to knead. 

My first loaf. I'm like a proud parent. 

Constance Smith, a blogger/vlogger of Cosmopolitan Cornbread had the perfect recipe - a no-knead recipe that only calls for four simple ingredients.  I have now made this recipe several times and each time with success. Once I even used the yeast that was four months past the expiration date, and another time I forgot one of the techniques - - and despite my errors, I still ended up with the perfect Loaf of bread. After getting hooked on bread baking but knowing I shouldn't be eating it all at once, I discovered a loaf and even half of a loaf freezes well.  The parchment paper the bread is baked in serves as an extra wrapping and then placed in a freezer bag.  Later the thawed bread made the nicest and richest cheesy grilled toast perfect for dipping in tomato soup. 










This post first appeared on Passementaries, please read the originial post: here

Share the post

The Bread and Butter of Quarantine

×

Subscribe to Passementaries

Get updates delivered right to your inbox!

Thank you for your subscription

×