Adventures in Breadmaking

First and foremost, yeast smells terribly bad.  I mean, really, really bad.  Worse than I remember.  I decided to make squaw bread today, mainly because I promised coworkers on Friday that I would bring them some on Monday.  Ordinarily I would have pretended that I forgot, but that only works for 4 weekends in a row, I think the 5th time, they'd think I was a flake with false promises.

So, onto bread.  You need a ton of ingredients and a great helper.  I had both.

Ingredients:

 

Helper:

So, I used a recipe for squaw bread from a cookbook given to me by my friend Sylvia, simply entitled Create.  She gave it to me because it has no photos.  From step one, I wish it had.

Here is the progression of things:
Yeast (gross)
Combine: molasses, melted butter, water, yeast mixture, brown sugar.
Combine (in a different bowl): 2 kinds of flour, corn meal, dry milk, salt

Combine those two bowls into one.  Mix well.  Set aside to proof:



This is the same dough, an hour later.

Then the recipe said to punch the dough, form into a loaf and let sit another 45 minutes.

This is my sad looking loaf:

After it sat for about 30 minutes, I realized it didn't look loaf-like.  At that point, I thought it might be too late to mess with it.  Maybe I thought touching it would make it deflate?  I don't know.  All I know is at that point, after the horrible smelling yeast, the 5-8 minutes of kneading and waiting over an hour and a half of it just sitting there, there was no turning back.

So I baked it.  This pile of non loaf-looking dough.

Here's the end result:

It didn't look that pretty but it tasted pretty good.

Tips for next time:

Make sure doors and windows are open.  Yeast is stinky.

Helpers, while useful, make a huge mess.

When making a loaf of bread, make sure the shape of the dough is an actual loaf.

Know that your husband will clean everything, so don't get anxiety over the mess you're making.

When taking pictures of whatever you're making, a clean kitchen is a must!