Zen and the Art of Baking Bread

I’m uncertain if my current leanings are more toward domesticity or cheap’ery.

I’ve been trying to walk a fine line of balance with my spinning between “I spin enough I’m actually making progress” and “omg, I don’t want to run out of roving to spin!” which leaves me with alternatingly large and small amounts of time on my hands.

This past week (and a half-ish), it’s been bread.  Specifically, 4 loaves worth, though one was barely touched before finding a home in the garbage bin (not trying THAT one again…  bread isn’t supposed to taste/have the texture of rice cakes, is it?)

But I should backtrack.

I frequently follow Apple’s Quick Time movie trailers site for upcoming releases.  (Shh, this relates, I sware!)  While there are many things about Charlottesville I love, it’s movie theaters isn’t one of them…  Mainly I keep an eye out for big releases which will hit the big screen here, and more interesting things which likely won’t.   Well, a few years ago, I saw a trailer for a movie called How to Cook Your Life.  (Link to the trailer here, btw.)  It looked interesting and amusing, and so David and I made mental notes to keep an eye out for it.

Fast forward a couple years, we see it on the ‘to buy’ shelf at Barnes and Noble, so… we take a leap of faith and buy it.  It’s not quite what you expect from the trailer, but it’s still an interesting documentary.  But, like many documentaries, you see it once and it lives on your shelf for a while.

We also have issues with bread in this house.  Namely, we’re pretty blah on the store stuff, and so David’s the only one who has sandwiches reglularly…  We end up wasting a lot of bread.  So I get the great idea I’m gonna make some.

David sends me a link he wants me to try.  It’s to NYT (Almost) No-Knead Bread.  Essentially, you replace kneading with time to process the gluten, and let it sit overnight before cooking.  And it was… okay.  It wasn’t a great loaf, it had a weird gummy-ish texture once it was stored, but it was okay.  Second attempt at the recipe yielded the aforementioned rice cakes.

But there’d been something naggling in my head for a while…  since watching that Documentary, in fact… The Tassajara Bread Book.  And since we were in the area snagging icecream after dinner, and I had the failed remainder of a loaf of bread weighing heavily on my mind, I snagged it.  On Monday, to celebrate the three-day weekend, I made the mother recipe, a whole wheat, yeasty loaf which is dense, but not heavy, and fills you up faster than you realize.  If a pint of Guiness is a loaf of bread in a glass, then a slice of this bread is a glass of Guiness.  (I even substituted in 2 cups white flour because I know normal whole wheat is a bit too much like eating 2x4s for me).

It’s pretty damned awesome curling up on a wet and dark morning, with a slice of bread, lightly toasted and smothered in apple butter.  If for nothing else, that makes it totally worth it.

Brief (crafty) updates

My first batch of roving arrives sometime this week, or whenever USPS Priority Mail arrives.  I’m both terrified and excited.  And have (somewhat) jokingly requested Kaylan come spend some time with me next week to help me get going.  (So yes, the comment was a joke.  But if you want to come, we’ll totally put you up, feed you, entertain you, and talk fiber to you.  rowr.)

Also, EEEEEEE!  Spinning.  Finally using the wheel.  Even if I’m total failsauce at it (which I will likely be while I’m learning) it’s so awesome.

Also, I was totally doing a photo-doc of my baking of Judy’s birthday cake on Friday.  But it died due to the camera-battery gods.  (For the curious, I used these recipes for Yellow Cake and Chocolate Buttercream)  They were really simple, easy-to-make recipes.  I wasn’t 100% thrilled with the cake results.  It ended up pretty dense, possibly because I didn’t have cakeflour and used all-purpose instead.  But the flavor was good, even if the feel wasn’t quite right.  And the frosting… mmm chocolate buttercream.  I could devote an entire post to my love of chocolate buttercream.  Best thing about baking a cake is “cleaning up” the frosting when you’re done.

omnomnom.

Well, here’s a linky to the pictures I did get.  Camera died after the actual assembly of ingredients for the cake, but before (well, during, but I’m out of batteries) the frosting was compiled.  So no finished product.  (Which is just as well… I’m much more good at tasty than I am at pretty, and it was a really messy icing job.)

New project

So, while in California visiting my family in June, I espied a box sitting in the corner of my room.  Inside, an unfinished spinning wheel kit.

My memory is crap; mom says we ordered it (my idea/request) shortly before I moved.  I…  have to take her word for it, I don’t remember anything about it, but I’ve always wanted to learn to spin.

Well, either way, it was mailed back to Virginia and arrived shortly before my birthday.

kit

Kinda overwhelming in pieces like that.  We picked up the stain and finishing, and have been slowly working on it over the past month.  This weekend, we finally took the final steps and assembled it (because we were tired of it taking up the back-half of our dining table, where it’s been hanging out for the various “cure” stages.)

But!  I thinks it looks awesome!

ta-dah!

Whee!  It’s awesome.  Well-made, too, if the difficulty of fitting some of the pieces together is any indication.  It still needs some oiling in parts.  Project of the moment: learning to treadle.

It’s actually a lot harder than you would think to tap your foot like that.  I’m both excited and terrified at the prospect of needing to add stuff in my hands to it, too.

Post is no-post

This post exists only to serve as reminder for myself of what I would like to try if/when I finally teach myself to quilt (or, rather, take the knowledge I have and actually do something with it.)

Not especially special on the pattern, but I do like the colors, though it’s totally not my usual style (I much prefer cool tones)  But I think it looks nice.

(image gak’d from SegPlayFlash on Kongregate)