Rassity Frassity Failure at Cooking
Thursday, February 23, 2006
For the most part, I have decided to make my blog about Positive things in my life. My dad has always told me to surround myself with positive people and I always try to look at the bright side of things. Well when I was on the phone with him last night, he said sometimes you need to talk about the negative to remember all the positives. Along with that advice and the fact that I don't want all of you to think this is the blog of "my perfect life" like an episode out of Leave it to Beaver land, here is my semi-negative entry about a total and utter cooking failure that I had last Saturday.
I spent the entire day cooking and using my new kitchenaid mixer. And when I mean entire, I mean 2 batches of protein muffins, salmon noodle casserole, 2 loaves of wheat bread, and my first stab at David's childhood treat, Divinity. When making new recipes, I am not used to absolute Failure. But sometimes I need to admit that I'm just not the best at something. I SUCK at baking bread. I have tried several times in the 10 years that I have lived in Denver to bake bread. Most recently at Thanksgiving, my mouth watered with thoughts of fluffy dinner rolls, that melt in your mouth. 20 minutes of hand kneading, 2 hours of rising and all I got were hockey pucks.Jump ahead to this week-ends escapade with whole wheat bread. Three hours in a warmed oven, it did not rise an inch. I decided to cook it anyway and was rewarded with 2 loaves of 20lb lead weights. We tried to toast it in the morning and even slathered with jelly, it was just bad. To the garbage it went.
The Divinity was another process as I don't have a candy thermometer. 40 minutes boiling sugar on the stove, trying to figure out when it gets to "hard ball" stage. Another 30 minutes in the mixer. I'm still not sure if it got to the correct consistency. Though with this recipe, 4 days later it is gone, and not in the trash sense.
Alas, I am no June Cleaver, though David is totally Wally. And even with 10 years of failure under my belt, I plan on dusting the flour off my face and trying bread again real soon!
By AllBeehive Thursday, February 23, 2006
4 Comments:
Gee, Beave, I think you are being too hard on yourself. So what if the bread could have been used to kill intruders or hold a boat in place as a mooring. The Divinity was good enough to dredge up my childhood past and put another warm fat layer on my waist. I loved it and would encourage you to take another stab at its divineness! I liked the bread too, even though I could not have gone swimming with sharks as my teeth were momentarily bleeding. Love, your Wally.
I give you a lot of credit. I have never made bread from scratch. I have a bread machine and I sometimes buy a box of breadmix from the store (yeast packet included) and do that, but I don't think that really counts as all I do is open packets push a button and preheat the oven.
Try again! I bet it just takes a little practice!
Hang in there, JUne :)
Bread at this altitude= bricks. don't even try it without a high altitude recipe. it just won't work. it's the altitude, not your culinary skill. quick breads turn out raw in the middle and with a thick crust of burn around the outside (muffins only way to go up here). I may have a cookbook with some altitude conversions in it that may help (vegetarian cooking for everyone by deb madison).
you think i'm kidding? the altitude is soo bad, my mother is overnighting bread for your bridal shower.
I made challah once, only with BOILED yeast (oops!).... Even the birds wouldn't touch it. :(
Divinity = DG and I eating 3C of sugar in a week. OUCH.
Now that I have the mixer, I don't have to knead anymore, so it's not that much work.
And Cyn, it is true, I feel I have been foiled by the altitude. I definitely need some new recipes.
I will try again and NOT post unless we eat the whole loaf in one sitting!
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