Elizabeth’s Journal

Daddy Has a Shadow; Making Bread

Yesterday Dale left for England, and Daddy arrived to keep us company while Dale is gone. Within ten minutes of Daddy’s arrival, Kayleigh was all over him and firmly requesting that he pull up his shirt so she could better examine his tummy. (He dutifully did so.) For most of the rest of the day, she spent the majority of her time with him—helping him bring things in from the truck, playing out in the back garden where he fed her oatmeal with blueberries for dinner, bringing him books to read and insisting on sitting in Dale’s chair to do so. After she had gone to sleep and I was putting the finishing touches on dinner (fresh bread, spaghetti with homemade sauce—although I did get a shocked exclamation from my dad wanting to know what in the h*** I’d done to my spaghetti when he saw that it was whole wheat), Daddy—flopped out in the recliner—commented that she certainly didn’t stop very much, did she? No, that’s right. She doesn’t stop very much at all!

Thanks to the generosity of Stepan and the memory of Jennifer, I have borrowed the baking stone that Stepan used to use before acquiring his HearthKit. It’s fun experimenting with making different kinds of bread and moving into the hand-formed loaves rather than those baked in a pan. I’ve made a peasant boule, foccacia, and rosemary pepper bread (yummy). Last night I attempted to make baguettes to go along with our spaghetti, but I was less than delighted with the results. (Although, since it was fresh bread, it tasted fine.) For one thing, the recipe made enough bread for an army—and too much for the baking stone. I need a bigger one (or two)! Also, now I understand why The Baker’s Catalogue sells rising aids for French and Italian loaves as well as boules, because mine certainly looked like someone had come along and sat on them—they didn’t rise up but instead rose out, so to speak. I shall have to try again. I think I have figured out how to shape dough into a boule, though; the technique sounds complicated when reading it, but the second time I tried it on the rosemary pepper bread, I understood what was going on. Little by little I improve.