How Bread Helped Me Digest a Difficult Decision
White bread recipe , a poem, flowers on my street
This weekend, I had to turn down a letter to the editor for our newspaper. And I had a really hard time with it.
I consulted experts.
“Oh, no. You can definitely not print that,” one editor said.
“You will get sued for that one if the person wants to sue you,” said a lawyer friend. “They likely will.”
“Really,” said an editor, “no.”
And I was still torn! But I also like both the letter writer and the person who the letter was about.
I needed comfort.
So, I baked bread and cuddled Jack the Puppy.
I know! I know! I’m supposed to make soup for comforting. That’s the whole point of this Substack!
Soup didn’t happen.
I think I needed to smell the dough rising and see the magic of yeast interacting with sugar and honey to create something so much bigger than the parts.
And community is like that too, right? Sometimes the individual members might be a bit much. Together, they are often something magical.
It’s like making bread. You don’t want to eat massive amounts of raw yeast because you’ll bloat (or worse have a poo-tastrophy), but if you combine that yeast with water and warmth and sugar and then flour?
Magic happens.
What feels icky (and tastes icky to me) as a standalone ingredient becomes beautiful when it’s combined with these other things that might not be so awesome alone either. Raw flour? Ick.
So, I’m going to share a bread recipe this week. It was super simple.
THINGS TO PUT IN YOUR ANTI-CONFRONTATIONAL WHITE BREAD OF AWESOME
(derived from Ranch Style Kitchen)
1 cup warm water (105°F)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
4 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk (warmed)
¼ cup honey
¼ cup salted butter (softened)
1 egg (beaten)
1 egg yolk (beaten)
2 teaspoons salt
6 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons olive oil (for greasing)
3 ice cubes (for baking)
2 Tablespoons salted butter (softened, for brushing)
HOW TO MAKE IT
Put the paddle attacment on your stand mixer. Put water in the bowl. Add sugar. Stir it to dissolve the sugar. Sprinkle yeast on top. Pretend it is glitter. Let it sit 10 minutes.
Admire that foamy magic.
Get that mixer on low so the magic doesn’t splatter everywhere and add in one at a time the:
I cup of flour,
milk,
honey,
butter,
egg,
egg yolk,
salt.
Put a dough hook attachment on. Add the flour bit by bit (1 cup is a bit). You’ll mix in 6 to 6 ½ more cups of flour. Do this until the dough pulls away from the bowl like the bowl forgot to put deoderant on or something.
Once it pulls, knead in the mixer 3 more minutes.
Take the mixing bowl off. Potentially cry because this is hard to do sometimes.
Put a tiny bit of olive oil on the dough, so coat it. Then put it back in the bowl and cover with a nice bread towel or plastic wrap that’s been sprayed or greased or a damp cloth.
Let it rise like a zombie horde for about 1 hour. I proofed it in the oven because I worry about zombie hordes and dogs trying to eat it. The oven seems safe.
Grease a couple (two) loaf pans. The 9x5 size works best.
Find the dough after an hour. Punch it down. Take out all your aggressions. You have some, right? Split it into two equal pieces.
Find a rolling pin. Do not use it as a weapon! Instead, roll out that bread on a floured surface. Make each piece a triangle that approximately 13 inches long and 9 inches wide.
Roll it up into a log. Start at the short end. Pinch creases closed. Put in the pans. Try to remember to put the seam side down.
Cover the pans with whatever you covered the bowl with.
Let it rise for 45-60 minutes. You are good with the rising when the dough is about 1 inch above tops of loaf pans.
Take that covering off.
Heat an oven to 350°F.
Put the loaves in.
Throw in 3 ice cubes into the bottom of the oven and quickly shut the oven door.
I could not do that because I am risk averse, but I threw them on a cookie sheet that I put in the oven.
Bake for 30-35 minutes. The inside will get to 190-210°F if you feel like poking it with a thermometer. .
Take it out. Cool on wire wrack for hour (you can put butter on the top, too. It sort of melts in). Then slice.
A POEM
Bread
Each night, in a space he’d make
between waking and purpose,
my grandfather donned his one
suit, in our still dark house, and drove
through Brooklyn’s deserted streets
following trolley tracks to the bakery.
There he’d change into white
linen work clothes and cap,
and in the absence of women,
his hands were both loving, well
into dawn and throughout the day—
kneading, rolling out, shaping
each astonishing moment
of yeasty predictability
in that windowless world lit
by slightly swaying naked bulbs,
where the shadows staggered, woozy
with the aromatic warmth of the work.
Then, the suit and drive, again.
At our table, graced by a loaf
that steamed when we sliced it,
softened the butter and leavened
the very air we’d breathe,
he’d count us blessed.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2012 by Richard Levine from A Tide of a Hundred Mountains, Bright Hill Press, 2012
FLOWERS ON MY STREET
I find it really lovely that my little street in downtown Bar Harbor is filled with so many flowers in so many people’s yards. Some people only have the narrowest of places between home foundation and sidewalk. Still, they choose beauty. Here are some quick photos I took of flowers on my street this weekend.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Richard Levine’s website is here.