...8 months later...

It has been eight months since my last post. I was recently informed by my teacher that he ran accross this blog and I felt some guilt for my blog neglect. So, here is the abridged version of eight months.

crow man (the short hand of my s

ummer working with 7-9 year olds)

sketch book sketch book ideas ideas

embroidery

you know... senior thesis type stuff. (whatever that means)

And what am I most into cooking right now? Bread! Lo and behold I've become a baker!

Simple White Bread:

2 cups warm water (warmed up about a minute and a half in microwave)

2 tbspn Yeast

5-6 cups flour

2 tbspn Sugar

2 tbspn salt

2 tbspn olive oil

2 tbspn honey

Combine your water and yest. Then add 2 cups of your flour and your sugar, salt, olive oil, and honey. Mix this aggresively with a spoon until you get your 'sponge'. This is a very special bread making term and you can impress all your friends by knowing it. After you have your sponge (it should look like a liquidy sponge with some bubbles here and there from the yeast) begin adding the rest of your flour, one cup at a time. Combine this first with your spoon. Make sure you're gettin all that flour down in there.

Once you have added about 3 additional cups of flour to your sponge, you should have a pretty solid mass of dough that can be handled without sticking all over your fingers. Tranfer this dough to a cutting board cover in more flour to prevent sticking. Knead this baby, punch it down and pull it up, until you have your dough to about the consistency of your earlobe. No sticky stickies.

Pop this back into your bowl with a dizzle of olive oil and cover it with a damn (not wet) towel. Put in a warm place to rise for about an hour/ hour and a half

So now you dough is nice and fat. Punch it back down and kneed it on your cutting board as you did before (with more flour on your kneading surface) after a minute or two of kneading, take a chunk about 3/4 of the dough off and begin kneading that separately. So you will now have a smaller batch and a bigger batch of dough- the smaller with be your bread roll and the larger with be your bread loaf. Shape your larger bit into a loaf shape, seam side down, and pop it into a loaf pan. If you don't have a loaf pan, a baking sheet is fine.... but I suggest that loaf pan. Take the little guy and put him in whatever shape and whatever baking apparatus you have on hand (I use my cast iron pan). Drizzle these both with Olive oil, prehead the oven to 375, and cover your loafs with a towel. Let the rise however long it takes for the oven to preheat, and then just pop 'em in! Bake for about 20-25 minutes. And now, you have fresh bread- YUM!