The Lowcountry Farm Wife Blog

It was a year ago that a friend came over to teach me how to make bread.

She wasn’t the first soul brave enough to attempt it.  A few months prior to that, at the apex of the sourdough craze, another fearless friend had me over and showed me how to make two types of sourdough bread.  I say “showed” and not “taught” because the word “taught” would assume some level of mastery being reached by the student.  No such thing happened, I’m afraid.

What did happen was that I realized that sourdough, despite all the alleged health benefits, was not for me.

You see, anything that takes two days to complete requires far more advanced planning and stability than my crazy life affords.  In fact, one of the beautiful loaves my friend sent home with me went through twenty-seven of the required twenty-eight (it seemed) steps only to overprove in my Highlander during an extended stop on the way to the office where I fully intended to bake it.

So, after the rude awakening with sourdough fiasco, I wasn’t overly optimistic about breadmaking.  But, when my friend Peggy introduced me to the goodness and health benefits of freshly milled flour, she immediately got us hooked on her amazing bread. 

Peggy brought over everything needed to make six loaves of yeast bread.  From salt to mixers; from olive oil to pans.  She brought the wheat, the mill, the recipe…all the things.  And when she left a few hours later, she took with her three beautiful loaves of bread and three more were rising on the stovetop, promising us fresh bread for the coming weeks.

Unfortunately, when those three loaves were popped into the oven some time later, the oven was inadvertently turned off.  Sadly, the loaves did nothing in the oven but overprove.  And overprove.  And eventually sink down into their pans like defeated schoolchildren having failed their first test.

But, I didn’t give up on the first failure this time.  After all, bread that could be made in just a few hours showed far more promise than bread that required days of effort.  And accidently turning off the stove was a lesson learned; not a mistake I was likely to repeat.

It was a good thing I had been highly motived by Peggy’s passion for freshly milled flour and homemade bread.  Because the mishaps were only beginning.

I didn’t have the mighty mixer she had, so I was trying to modify the recipe down to a single loaf.  Seems like simple enough math, but, somehow, the math wasn’t mathing.

And that wasn’t the only thing.  I had learned to knead the dough until the gluten developed enough to see a “window pane” in the stretched dough.  But no pane was visible in my bread.  Ever. 

Even when I stayed up long after my bedtime kneading the stubborn bread, no pane formed.  Eventually, I had to realize that even if a pane were to form, and even if the bread were to rise, the baking would not be worth the lost sleep.  So…with part disappointment and part resolution to figure out the answer in the morning, I placed the dough in a covered bowl and put in the refrigerator knowing, full well, that it would never rise.

But that only showed how little I knew about bread. 

The bread that I didn’t think would rise, rose.  It rose in the refrigerator.  It rose out of the bowl.  It rose onto the refrigerator and dipped down onto the shelves before finally exhausting itself into usless blob.

Lesson two learned.  Bread dough does not need to stretch into a window pane to rise.

Thus began four months of trial and error.  Mostly error.  My patient family ate bread as flat as bricks.  They ate bread as hard as kidney stones.  They ate bread that looked like it fell from space in a meteor shower.

But slowly, I worked through the ingredients, the timing, and the tools that turn flour, water, oil, honey, yeast, and salt into  a fabulous odor that permeates our home a few nights a week.

I’m still no baking export.  But one thing is for sure, if I can figure it out, anyone can.  With a few tools, a long suffering family (or, more preferably, chickens to eat your rejects), you too can enjoy that intoxicating smell of fresh bread.