Bread-Making Day 1

Bread is a prized, glorious thing! It is a palette of an Edward Burne-Jones pre-Raphaelite painting that runs deeper than the colors, and the images, and themes, and its undertones, and moralities in question.  For all its simplicity, it allures the senses, then plays the upper hand, until your soul succumbs to a taste immortal. It is a classic, respectable piece of history with a ferocious character that has fed a history of heroism, cowardice, convention, and innovation.

Two weeks ago, I decided to be that one thing about food that I have truly loved in the course of my life, a bread-maker! With the meager allowance that I have earned from my auxiliary assignment (not to mention my latest resignation), I grappled with saving for the most staple ingredients (that I intended to buy wholesale, but I must be thinking wishfully since I am almost broke) and the gas (to disallow interference from papa from cooking the more important, time-tested and never-ascribed to failing meals). In the unfortunate circumstance that my bread will not turn out to be bread, at least I have paved a course that will still keep my dignity afloat by redeeming myself from too tight economic strings.  My affinity with bread stemmed from my stingy personality. My societal predisposition has defaulted an inability to afford the finer tastes that life has to offer and if given a chance, I am bound to falter and ponder on more sensible practices, and hence, abstain with steadfast resiliency, half-knowing that a great portion of the exchange of commodities goes straight to rental fees or fancy bank loans that unjustly and deceivingly favors ambiance and less of the bread spirit.

An unruly character of an artisan would be sacrificing quality in favor of profit in the name of consumer ignorance. We tend to interpret taste in terms of the overpowering taste and less of the base. 

And so here I am cleaning the recesses of our underground kitchen, scrubbing rusty tile-ends with sodium hypochlorite, damping the conventional oven and finding pieces of dead cockroaches and spiders and their eggs. It is a forest of abandonment from a family that has pledged to desist baking. My hands puckered at the repeated rinsing. My face shone brightly and with all of the oil in it, if I can squeeze it further to maximize its production, and once and for all, give me the liberty to become a presentable woman with no need of a powder, can collect up to 10 mL worth. Since I will not pay for newer airtight containers I saw on Paul Hollywood’s studio kitchen, my Nissin and Rebisco biscuit containers will do.

I reviewed the Bloomer recipe I got from Paul Hollywood’s classic bread episode and obsessively-compulsively trained my senses to never forget a single practice, and which by the way, turned out disastrously. Here are so far my challenges!

1.  Paul Hollywood made it look like kneading the dough is easy. He talks and smiles and looks at the camera as if nothing can ever go wrong. But boy, oh boy, I am really in big trouble. When he talked about the activity doubling as way to tone your arms, I wish he’d exaggerate so that I would know the level of difficulty this activity really portrays. My fingers were becoming the webbed limbs of a duck, and too much dough is sticking into the kneading surface. When I grasped for the oil to decrease the surface tension, the bottle went all gooey and I hated the possibility of overturning and messing things up. In the end, my dough was not all smooth and shiny. And I proved it before it can even passed an artisan’s test. I am so impatient and I shall pay for it after it turns out in the oven. For kneading, I might have to use flour next time.

2.  My dough did not rise dramatically! After an hour has passed, it looked like an incompetent lump, still eons from PH’s. But I put in 7 grams of instant dry yeast! I think I must add more next time. It must rise! It must! I believe the temperature is also at fault. The program says proving it in a warm place. Since, Philippines is warm enough, I thought leaving it in the counter is enough. I have entertained the idea of proving my dough outside, but the thought of bird droppings and the relative tensile strength of the generic cling wrap I have bought decided otherwise.

And after everything else is finished:

It tasted like beer, and sourdough-like despite not having had to ferment it for a number of days. It yielded a hollow sound when tapped at the crust but the undersides were burned! It needs more effective kneading prior to initial proving. You can almost smell alcohol and olive oil distinctively. I forgot to coat the proving container and the baking surface, which troubled me a lot. I have to add more flour when kneading and I have to knead forcefully if I am to achieve a shiny, smooth dough. Good Heavens! I proved it for 9 hours, because I think it fell short with the description of rising. I baked my hopeless bread at 220 degrees for 25 minutes, then another 200 degrees at 10 minutes, cheated another 5 minutes before transitioning because I felt the crust is not assuming a fancy color. I added sesame seeds to at least dignify my product, which in the end did not stick and fell into the baking sheet. I scoured my Bloomer, but it did not bloom! Oh well. This is life. When I carried my bloomer upstairs, all the seeds fell into the plate and my heart sank. After pondering long on what I missed, I felt at least redeemed that the upper crust was fine and the dusting was not overboard. The inside was chewy, and had competent gluten formation. Tadashi, it smelled like alcohol. I  failed at an epic unprecedented pace at the base. The Bloomer I made perhaps will never sell. Anyway, I'll just improve next time with a sweeter dough.