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This is a lesser-horror story. It begins with a decision to bake bread without a stand mixer and without a breadmaker, when I have really never done so without either. Or even with, come to think of it. I always had a Lauren before. Lauren is a very good baker.
Before I get too far into my narrative, you should know that this story has a happy ending. I haven’t even told you the story yet, and already I’ve ruined the ending! But observe:
I was so relieved when Justin sliced into the first loaf to reveal a decent-looking crumb. I hid my eyes when he made the first cut, then when he pronounced it okay, good even, I fetched my camera. I needed to have photographic evidence that I’d won.
You see, before there was bread (which came out dense, well-flavoured, and with a very nice crumb), there was an unexpected, evil, sticky, and not-at-all-nice dough. A dough that grabbed both of my hands and stuck me to the bowl before it decided to devour the bowl, the counter, and a kilogram and a half of flour (± half kg) before it was brought under control through the combined efforts of four Buis.
You read that right: it took four people, three of whom are under 5′3″, to pwn this dough. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.
The bread begins with this story and recipe, from Orangette. I really like Molly’s blog; her recipes and notes are good, and when I get the yen to bake, she’s been advising me in place of Lauren and my copy of Nick Malgieri’s How To Bake, both left behind in Portland.
3 1/2 cups of water, 1/4 cup honey, 2 T active dry yeast, 2 T canola oil: everything was going swimmingly. I began to add the flour and shortly after the addition of the sixth cup of flour, I began to realise that things were going horribly awry. The recipe called for only a half cup more, but to my eye, it didn’t look like a half cup more was going to do it. I stuck a finger in anyway, and that’s when I got trapped. Before I could react, the evil not-dough had swallowed my hands and wrists and I was beginning to panic because I had followed the directions closely, and this wasn’t supposed to be happening*.
I started wishing very hard for Lauren to arrive like a delivering angel to either a) help me out of my jam, or b) pull down Malgieri, and read me out of my jam. But I wasn’t in Portland, so while Lan beat back the dough with a wooden spoon, Long grabbed the bag of flour and threw it first by the half cup, then poured it straight from the bag onto my hands and the dough monster. Meanwhile, Vinh ran to the market to buy another baking pan, because suddenly, we had more dough than the present pans could handle.
There was an ugly struggle.
By the time Vinh returned, Long was reading about bread on the internet and Lan was hovering by my shoulder as I wrestled with the recalcitrant lump. We’d lost track of how much flour had been added and we were so far off-recipe that all I could think to do was to keep going, to keep adding flour and knead the dough until it was smooth and elastic and did not stick to the counter. Finally, after a long, long time, it was and it didn’t, so I divided the dough and put it into the pans to rise. And it rose, so I baked it. And then we ate it.
THE END.
*Here’s where I think I went wrong: I used wholemeal flour in place of whole wheat flour. I couldn’t find whole wheat flour in any of the markets here in Brisbane, so I hoped wholemeal flour would do. Furthermore, The Economist Style Guide advises in its American English/British English section that wholemeal flour in British English is whole wheat flour in American English. So I figured everything would be copacetic but I was SO WRONG. Say what, Economist Style Guide?!
