| | Waiting for bread to finish baking in the oven so I can go to bed! I haven't baked "real" bread much lately...and right now my house smells heavenly! I went wheat-free about 5 months ago (much to the happiness of my crampy tummy) so now I make bread with rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch flour and xanthun gum. I feel so exotic! It's not so bad really, it is just that the bread rising proccess is challenging...it doesn't want to rise all that much, but when it does, the dough doesn't have elasticity, so it splits apart. WHen it is ready to eat, just looking at it can make it crumble. But sometimes I can get it just right, dough rises about 30% of "normal" dough, and it doesn't fall apart! Wheat-free baked goods that are actually very decent to eat are chocolate chip cookies and pizza.
Got a bread machine recently after several years of the subtle ever-patient advice of my friend. (yeah...I learn slowly) It is working out well! I really love the Zen experience of kneading dough, and still like to make bread the old-fashioned way, but I do it less and less often because of the mess and time involved. Plus kneading wheat-free dough is like kneading brownie batter...it just is frustrating work on top of the mess.
Know what else I really love? making my friend's recipies. Nina wrote in the latest issue of Edgy (the 'zine) about her garden and the collection of plants she has from loved ones...from cuttings right out of their gardens. SHe thinks of these people as she tends to their plants, and talks about them with her kids. I feel this way about making the food of the people I love. I've got my great-grandmother's ginger cookie recipie, my grandma's noodles and meatballs, my mom's mashed potatoes, my friend's pepperoni bread, another friend's authentic Italian pasta dishes, my mother-in-law's "joke" (Asian rice "porridge" made from rice and meat stock) I get a glimpse of the spirit of each loved person of my life when I make their food. This is especially comforting to me when just about everyone I mentioned here lives far from me, or has died.
Big, beautiful bread is out of the oven! It will sit there on my stone till tomorrow. Now, I go to bed! |
| | Posted 3/29/2003 12:08 AM - 1 view - 1 comments
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