Archive for March 9th, 2005
Wednesday, March 9th, 2005Intensity
Caribou…waiting for the “Go Search” command; a search dog in training.
Wednesday, March 9th, 2005The Early Years
Caribou was still an adolescent here, in the early years of her training as a Search and Rescue dog.
Wednesday, March 9th, 2005Bread Making
I used to think I would bake fresh bread from scratch; kneading the elastic dough with flour covered hands; letting it rise only to punch it down again; shaping the dough into a monstrous loaf that would yeild a thick, crispy crust. I imagined I had time for this kind of thing. I romanticized the process, bought heavy books about the different types of bread, and dreamed of owning a huge, commercial oven that could bake three loaves at the same time. Of course, I never did any of this.
So you can imagine my delight when I received a bread machine as a wedding gift nearly two years ago. Now perhaps I could bake bread; maybe not the old fashioned way; but it would be warm and fresh and made from scratch nonetheless.
My first attempt was disappointing. I used the little pamphlet that came with the machine; I neglected to correct for baking at elevation; I used all purpose flour rather than bread flour. The result was a dense, hard loaf that was dry and unappealing. I tossed the whole thing into the garbage.
I decided I needed better instructions. I purchased a cookbook made especially for bread machines and have never looked back since. Beth Hensperger (who has written other large tomes on bread making) has written a fabulous cookbook called The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook. She explains succinctly how to adjust ingredients for elevation; she talks about different kinds of yeast, and flour. She has created a fool proof instruction manual for making bread in a bread machine. The best part of her book is the vast choices she offers. The book is divided into sections such as: Tradtional Loaves, Earth’s Bounty, Sweet Loaves and Express Lane Bread. She provides a brief description of each type of bread and gives instructions for both 1-1/2 pound loaves and 2 pound loaves. I have yet to make a loaf that has not come out perfectly.
So now, when the mood strikes me, I can spend fifteen minutes dumping ingredients into my bread machine, flick a switch and in just over 3 hours a loaf of bread appears. It is the perfect solution for someone who has no time to bake bread, but longs to do so anyway.