Thursday, November 1, 2012 DITL

( In which our heroine has a very typical (see=dull) Thursday, writes a lot, and harasses cats. Warnings: NaNoWriMo. )

(no subject)

Bread, guys! Bread! You have no idea the block I've had when it comes to bread. It rivals finding the area of cones and writing a story where nobody dies as things I am convinced I am simply unable to do.

I was just telling my boss about this peculiar block of mine and she scoffed at me - scoffed, I say! - and claimed bread was easy. Hah! If only she had seen the myriad of doughy inedible corpses I have left in my wake!

Then I thought: fine. I've been making a ton of new foods lately, ones I never would have been able to make before. Maybe I can make bread. And hey, here I have all these damn pie pumpkins from the CSA. I might as well use them for something other than curry and chili.

So I make some dough. I punch it a lot and knead it and follow the recipe To. The. Letter. And then I wait. And wait. And wait. And the dough just sits there, refusing to rise. I put it in the fridge overnight. Take it out this morning. Now it's just cold and dry and flat.

But instead of getting sad and giving up I thought, fuck the recipe and proceeded to try again. But this time, using techniques I'd learned from the Grand Central Bakery book (and probably duh things that every baker knows and the recipe just assumed). And then I slapped the dough in the warmest place in the house and crossed my fingers.

And it rose.

Like a zombie. Like Frankenstein's monster. Like motherfreaking bread.

I'm 26 and I have finally baked a decent loaf of bread. Achievement unlocked.

Don't think my other blocks are going down any time soon. Fuck cones.