Reactionary

I am obsessed with saving money. I was always the kid who never spent her monetary Christmas gifts but put them in the bank of my own free will. While siblings and friends cavorted around with new trinkets, I went without. I never had a master plan, I just couldn’t bear the thought of spending my gift.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I’m still a saver. Even after the beginning of the Great Recession, I went on doing what I’d always done… saved money. Lately, it’s been worse. With prices for everything going up and my paychecks staying the same, I’ve been constantly thinking of how I can save a few pennies so I may soon lie on the beach in Hawaii sipping $25 mojitos financed by my saving money now.

The baker I frequent makes great products but recently, they’ve had to increase their prices thank to the rising wholesale prices of grain and sugar. I will not buy cheap, bad product. But I couldn’t see myself spending $7 for a loaf of bread in any frequent timetable.

So what did I decide? I’d start making my own bread since now I have a full-size oven that heats fairly evenly and a lot of counter space. So, the next time Borders gave out a 40% off coupon, I bought Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice after some browsing. I studied it for weeks. The first few chapters are painful in their detail but I decided if I wanted to make bread, I may as well make it right and learn what I need to know about it. Two weekends ago, I attempted my first loaf, a simple French bread boule.

The preferment and the two flours await the knead

I calculated it to be worth about $200. It could be worth more if I counted the weeks of trudging through the minutia of the 12 Stages of Bread I suffered through. I ended up making three boules out of that recipe and was impressed with the flavor and texture, less so with the form and my sloppy marking of it. Also, all three boules had spread more than I thought was entirely attractive.

The shaped loaves before their night in the fridge

This weekend, I attempted the Pane Siciliano which is made with half semolina flour. I actually had that flour in my pantry for over a year and had used it in my pizza crusts for a while. Who knew. Once again, I thought the bread tasted great, especially just out of the oven (worry not, P. Reinhart! I waited until it was fully cooled!), but once again, it had spead so much that all three loaves stuck to each other and even threatened to outgrow the very large cookies sheet I had them on. What gives? Are they over-risen (I don’t care if that’s not a word. If you have ever attempted this madness, you know what I mean.) or is my shaping technique terribly sloppy. It could be. I never was much of an artesian.

In which the loaves have outgrown their pan.

Not only is this immensely time consuming, especially when done by hand which is how I made that first French bread, this whole thing of heating the oven to 500°, squirting water onto the scorching walls, and dumping hot water into a screaming hot cast iron pan does not fit comfortably into the things I should do to keep cool in the summer. In my freezer lie half of Metropolitan’s French White Table loaf I bought weeks ago and one more of my French bread boules. Two of the loaves of the Pane Siciliano will follow this evening. That should be enough bread to get me into the fall and into the beginnings of the winter. Maybe then, when the temperatures outside begin to plummet, I’ll welcome the cast iron steaming ritual and can stay inside to enjoy the smell of freshly baked bread.

It may look flat and uglyish but it tastes good.

Posted on August 16th, 2009 under Food •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback