Start off by proofing 3 teaspoons of yeast in 1/3 of a cup of brown sugar dissolved in 3/4 of a cup of warm water. After a few minutes, add 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 1 teaspoon of salt (the very last of the salt!), and 2 lightly beaten eggs. Start stirring in 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, about a cup at a time. Knead the resulting dough (which is incredibly easy to work with) for a good five minutes, put in a greased bowl, cover, and set aside for the
First rising (1 hour)
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So, sorry that I've been so inconsistent about posting recently (which, I'm afraid, isn't going to improve over the next few weeks - see note at the very end of the post). Now that it's over, I think I can accurately claim that this was the most work intensive, and possibly but much less certainly the most stressful, finals period of my life. The term essay for one of my classes really wasn't so bad (although, as it turns out, writing twelve pages of a basic review sort of paper takes me much, much longer than twelve pages on literature ever used to).
But the field theory final was, simply put, absurd. Not overwhelmingly difficult (despite a few tricky sections), but almost overwhelmingly lengthy... the final write-up was about 38 pages (which had to be TeXed up, a feat that by itself took many, many hours), and it feels like I went through a good tree's worth of scrap paper (Although, just looking at an order-of-magnitude guess for how many pages you can get from an average tree, that's clearly an exaggeration!) Anyway, glad that it's all over...
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Punch the dough down, knead for a minute, roll up and put in a 9x5 inch bread tin. Cover and set on top of the nearest radiator for the
Second rising (1 hour and 30 minutes)
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And, other than said finals, I haven't been doing too much these days... I had a really great trip to Albany/Williams/Home over Thanksgiving, and felt like I had a few stories to tell from that - everything from travel (absurdly delayed flights met with spontaneous applause from the passengers-to-be, people dressed as football mascots high-fiving random people in airport terminals) to food (Four mammals in four days? The world's most artistic collection of calzones? Chocolate chip pancakes for dinner? Check, check, and check!) to purely random encounters (I mean, I know I went to a small college town, but just how many people and professors can you really expect to run into in the same coffee shop on consecutive mornings?)
But, it's probably been much too long to do those stories any justice, so I guess we'll just have to see what happens on this upcoming vacation instead...
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Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for 31 minutes. Let cool before slicing.
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Tasting verdict: Well, for being such an unplanned conglomeration of ingredients, I'd say this came out fairly well. More than anything, I think the operative adjective for this bread is "mild." The bread doesn't have that whole-wheat "healthy" taste to it, but neither does it have a characteristically white-bread flavor; the brown sugar adds to much for that, I think. The texture, also, is pretty mild: the fat/egg content is clearly noticeable, but it's not nearly as off-the-charts as some of the other loaves we've made. All-in-all: a good loaf for breakfast purposes, maybe average at best for sandwiches.
Vacation time: From now until Jan. 5th! I don't know if I'll be making bread at home, so probably best to assume that there'll be no new posts until at least the week after New Year's. So: Happy Holidays, everyone!
