Fingers Crossed

So I fell asleep on the couch before eight o'clock last night. Last night happened to be a Friday night, so when I woke up in a puddle of drool around 8:30, I felt rather pitiful. In my groggy, self-berating state of mind, I decided that the perfect antidote to my general blah-ness on this Friday night would be to bake a loaf of bread. Naturally.

I have been meaning to tackle this item on the list for a while now, so I already had the recipe all picked out. Apparently, this recipe for No-Knead Bread created quite a stir when it was first published in the New York Times four years ago. Now, I kind of thought that I would enjoy the process of kneading the dough, figured it would make me feel very meditative and Zen... However, I was swayed by the many reviews I read of this magical bread; all promise that it will be the best bread that you can make and that it is nearly impossible to screw up.

So last night I gathered all four ingredients, put Patty Griffin on the ipod, lit the fire (by this, I mean I flipped the switch on the side of the mantle), and commenced bread making.

A half a cup of whole wheat flour (look at me, improvising already!), two and a half cups of bread flour, one and a quarter teaspoons of salt...

Plus three-quarters of a teaspoon active dry yeast (yet more improvisation since I did not have instant yeast) and one and a half cups of lukewarm water  =  magical dough-like substance that reminded me of the oobleck we made in fourth grade in some sort of vaguely academic science demonstration on the differences between liquids and solids, but I digress.

Then I covered the dough with plastic wrap, tucked it in for the night, and headed to bed feeling slightly more productive. Although, in all honesty, the whole procedure took less than fifteen minutes. In any event, the secret to this knead-less bread is allowing it to rise very slowly; most of the recipes that I found recommend twelve to eighteen hours.

After a respectable sixteen hours, my dough looked like this.

The next step involved dumping the dough onto a floured surface and folding it over itself, like so.

I let the dough hang out like that for fifteen minutes, picked it up, formed it into a ball, and plopped it in a bowl lined with a towel covered in corn meal.

My bread-to-be now has to relax for another two hours under another cotton towel. Supposedly it is doubling in size under there...magical!

I'm off to practice my Spanish whilst my dough naps. To be continued...

El hombre está debajo del carro.

It's a much less sinister phrase when accompanied by this photo. Although... may come in handy in TJ either way.

Mi bicicleta es morado. True story.

It has become quite clear to me in recent months that I have a serious problem with follow through. I love brainstorming, organizing, planning, but following through on the execution...eh, not so much. 

I have a chest of drawers full of the supplies necessary for myriad abandoned craft projects from jewelry making to decoupage. At this moment, pushed to the back of my cabinet are things like quinoa and tahini, purchased with the best of intentions for recipes that never came to fruition. My Post-it note bookmark has been stuck to page 34 of Huckleberry Finn for at least a month now. Part of the reason I started this blog was to try to hold myself accountable for following through on my list, and now I've started to slack off even on that... Acknowledgment is the first step, right? I'm working on it.

On a more positive note, I am started working on my Spanish with Rosetta Stone six weeks ago, and I am really enjoying it! The whole concept behind Rosetta Stone is that the best way to learn a language is through immersion rather than the memorization of isolated vocabulary words. You slowly build vocabulary through through reading, writing, listening, and speaking Spanish words and sentences that are paired with pictures that provide the meaning. There is no English at all. I have already learned many useful phrases like, "La gato es en el sombrero" and "El niňo come una manzana amarillo." That's "The cat is in the hat" and "The boy is eating a yellow apple" for those of you who no habla espanol.

  

In any event, I don't think six weeks qualifies as evidence of follow through, but I'm hopeful. Plus, it gives me another, much needed way to bond with my students... They love hearing the latest simple sentence that I have mastered and it's a great chance for them to teach me something. Leo el periódico todos los días, bitches.