My love for cooking and baking goes way back to my Junior High School days. I can remember when I had my first Home Economics class and I was so excited that you could take raw ingredients and mix them together in certain ways and make something of them. It was miraculous to me. And when I got home that afternoon I was beside myself with joy as I recounted what we had done in class to my mother. She smiled to herself and told me that if I wanted...I could pour through her cookbooks for desserts and I could begin to make desserts for our school lunches. I would need to make out a list of ingredients for what we needed and I could use the kitchen on Sunday afternoons. She would be close by if I needed help but that it was really all up to me. Well, let me tell you what a joy it was. We had some pretty interesting desserts. I made the usual cakes, pies and brownies but I also made cream puffs, and Boston Cream Pie and doughnuts! I'm sure there were some flops although I don't remember any but what I do remember is that this is where I wanted to be for the rest of my life.
Of course a move (my father was in the Air Force) took us to England where the kitchen was small and I had discovered boys. Occasionally I would wind up in the kitchen making a dessert for dinner or maybe for some lucky guy that I was dating but it didn't happen that much.
College brought me back to the states but a dining hall took the place of meals and until I met some people who lived in homes I didn't get back into the kitchen until my Senior year of college and apartment living.
My favorite roommate of all time was a girl who came from a small Texas town and had a love for cooking just like me. We were happier than pigs in slop. A kitchen to call our own and dinner parties to hold whenever we could afford it. We made out grocery lists and poured over cookbooks checked out from the university library. And what meals we had. I learned a lot of great Texas recipes and she learned a lot of "northern" food. My mother was born in Philadelphia, PA and so her cooking stems from that area. I learned to fry and Vanessa learned to bake. It was a match made in heaven. And that's where the bread baking began in earnest. It was small stuff at first...homemade bread and rolls. But it progressed to croissants and puff pastry and whole grains and multi-grains and artisian loafs.
If I had known then what I know now I would have taken a different path. I would have gone to culinary school but for some reason that just did not occur to me. I don't think that I would have ever wanted to run my own restaurant but instead I would have liked to have had a bakery. I don't think the high stress level of putting meals in front of customers would have suited me. But working early in the morning with yeast and dough appeals to me on so many levels. The silky feel of working good yeast dough between your hands is akin to nervana to me.
My husband has reaped the benefits of homemade bread from the time that we began to date because by then I had stopped buying bread altogether and was making my own entirely.
There is just something about taking a loaf of bread out of the oven and smelling that wonderful yeasty aroma that makes my soul sing. I do it because I love it. I do it because it fulfills me in a way that nothing else does.
So here's a recipe for a simple loaf of bread that's easy to do...no muss, no fuss and maybe it will make your soul sing as well.
(makes 1 small loaf)
1 Dutch Oven with Lid
3 cups (15 oz.) all-purpose flour. (I like King Arthur)
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water (7 oz.)
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (3 oz.) beer...the worse tasting the beer...the better the bread. I use Bud Light
1 tablespoon white vinegar
(This recipe can also be doubled, which I do quite often and it works out wonderfully.)
Whisk flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. Put water, beer and vinegar in a measuring cup and add one to the other. Fold the dry mixture into the wet mixture till you have a somewhat shaggy dough.
Put plastic wrap over the top of the bowl and set it somewhere to rise...anywhere from 8 to 18 hours.
Next morning, take the dough out of the bowl and put it on a lightly floured piece of parchment paper. Knead just a couple of times and turn whole piece of dough into a rough shaped ball. Put parchment paper and dough into a small skillet or bowl. Cover with cloth and let rise for 2 hours.
About 30 minutes before baking, put the Dutch oven with the lid on into the stove and preheat to 500 degrees. Once the two hours is up, take the dough and put it into the Dutch oven. Be careful as the Dutch oven will be screaming hot and you don't want to burn yourself.
Immediately turn the heat down to 425 degrees, put the lid back on and bake for 30 minutes. When the 30 minutes is up, take the lid off the Dutch oven and bake for another 30 minutes.
Carefully remove the whole kit and kaboodle from the oven and remove the bread from the pot and transfer to wire rack and cool to room temp.
Recipe adapted from a Cook's Illustrated recipe.
