When I was a little girl, it was rare for my mother to ever let me "play inside" anyone's house. My friend Tommy, lived across the street and 4 doors down. We played in our respective yards, on his swing set, in my sandbox, but I had never been in his house, nor he in mine.
One Saturday morning, thrill of thrills, I got invited over to Tommy's house to play. Inside. I don't remember what we played... all I remember is the lovely aroma in his house. His mom was baking bread. From scratch. With flour up to her elbows and all over the kitchen floor, there she stood, leaning over a wooden table, punching and folding a massive white pillow of dough. Several golden loaves, fresh from the oven, were cooling on the sideboard.
I had never seen, much less tasted homemade bread. My mom always had a nice loaf of Wonderbread ("Builds Strong Bodies 12 Ways") stowed in the breadbox in its cheerful wrapper with the red, yellow, and blue balloons. She kept her butter in the fridge, rock hard, and you could count on your sandwich being dotted with lumps of cold butter under the jelly or bologna or what have you... cold lumps that tore holes in the delicate surface of the bread. Mom’s sandwiches gagged me.
Just as I was imagining what a sandwich made with Mrs. Smith’s bread might be like, she wiped her hands on her apron, grabbed a huge serrated knife, sliced two big slabs from one of the warm loaves, spread them with soft, golden butter and handed Tommy and me each a piece. And we ate them. Standing there. Right over the flour-strewn floor with the butter dribbling down our chins.
Bread, in my home, went in and out of style depending on what diet my mother was on. Mostly it was out. Bread was considered fattening, which must have been true, because Mrs. Smith was jolly and round... just like I imagined Mrs. Santa Claus would look... nothing like the "actress" figure my mother aspired to. When Mom did eat bread it was "diet" bread, which, though it tasted like cardboard, must be working because Mom was thin, and the bread said "Hollywood" on
the label.
Years later, as a busy young mother of two little girls, I bought whole wheat loaves from the grocery. There was a good selection of healthful, tasty options... Pepperidge Farm and Brownberry Ovens... a far cry from the Wonderbread of my childhood. And every so often I'd splurge on a loaf of "real" bakery bread, longingly remembering that magical day in Mrs. Smith's kitchen.
When my kids got a little older, and I had a little more time on my hands, I decided to venture into the world of bread-making. Or, you might say I stuck a toe in the water. I got a bread machine for Christmas and began turning out loaf after loaf of fairly decent bread. Sometimes a little tough and gummy, but fragrant and delicious just the same. All it took was accurate measuring and listening for that little beep that indicated the bread was done. We ate my “homemade” bread almost exclusively for several years until life once again got pretty hectic... my aging parents moved to town, I had two teenage daughters with busy schedules, and I went back to college. Grocery store bread once again became de rigueur.
5 years ago, with my kids successfully launched into adult lives of their own, and sadly, both parents having passed away, I again found myself with time on my hands... and missing homemade bread. I dragged the bread machine out of the basement and began making a loaf a week, plenty to feed my husband and me. Always the innovator, I improved the operation, setting a timer in order to catch the last punch-down, removing the kneading hook that always ended up baked into the bottom of the bread. And while I had my hands on the dough, I couldn’t resist shaping it a little before returning it to the pan.
“Hands on the dough.... now that feels really good... actually touching this miracle made of flour and yeast and water, soft and smooth, like warm flesh. Maybe sometime I should try making a loaf from scratch.”
This is the monologue I had with myself a few weeks ago.
“Now, let me think... how much extra hands-on time would it take to make bread from scratch? Not much more... just the 10 minutes of delightful kneading, come to think of it, the bread machine takes 20 minutes to knead dough, is that why the machine-bread is a little tough? Is it possible that the machine is over-kneading?”
A little internet research yielded this:
In order for bread dough to rise properly you must "develop" the gluten in the bread to give it enough elasticity to trap the carbon dioxide given off as the yeast grows. That's what makes bread rise. If you overwork the dough, the gluten can break down and lose its elasticity. The bread will not stretch as much, some of the bubbles will burst as the gas expands, and the bread will be heavy. However, if you are kneading bread by hand it's pretty close to impossible to over-knead it. (Unless you are Hercules). It is common however, for bread made by machines to be over-kneaded. So, how do you tell when the bread is well-kneaded? Take a handful of dough and stretch it into a small sheet with your fingers. The dough should stretch easily and smoothly, just like a good piece of bubble gum just before you blow that bubble. You want an elastic mass to trap the gas and expand, until baking makes the dough strong enough to hold its shape.
I love the bubble gum analogy. Bread machine dough is just like bubble gum that has been chewed too long, so tough that you couldn’t blow a bubble without bursting a lung. So while thinking about that, I began wondering about time factors... there's more total time required for "scratch" bread... my machine produces a loaf in 3½ hours, largely because the rising process happens rapidly at a perfect 75°. In my 66° house it takes 2 hours for dough to rise. From start to finish, mix to slice, we're talking about 5 hours. Not a big deal, because I’m usually home, and could easily fit an errand or appointment into a 2 hour window. Come to think of it, without the constraint of the machine, which only makes 1 loaf at a time, I can make 2 at a time, one to eat and one to freeze, saving, in the long run, 2 hours.
Last weekend I made Sourdough Caraway Rye bread, this weekend, a couple of Honey Whole Wheat loaves. From scratch. The loaves were light and tender and delicious, much better than any machine-made bread I’ve ever tasted.
So bring on the butter... Mrs. Smith would be proud!
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