Covered in Flour

I had a moment today when I was so pleased with the image I had of myself; I was delighted to see that I had become the sort of person who decided to whip up a loaf of bread as if it was no big deal.

While patting myself on the back for being this sort of handy, crafty, homey creator, I neglected to acknowledge the other images of myself that I have seen over and over again: that I am the sort of person who realizes halfway through mixing that she's out of an ingredient, that I am the sort of person who misses a step in the ingredients, and chiefly, that I am the sort of person that hates the feel of flour.

I decided to try to put aside my uneasiness and discomfort with the grainy feel of that white magnetic powder because my kitchen looked so pretty with my cookbook perched in a book holder, opened to the photo and recipe for "simple white bread". I glanced in my flour cannister and confidently guesstimated that I could provide the requested 4 1/2 cups for the dough. It was only when I fell slightly short of the last half cup that I realized I was supposed to have an additional half a cup to fold in while kneading the bread, and additionally needed the amount necessary to flour my surface for multiple kneadings, along with my rolling pin and dough-encased hands.

I "kneaded" anyway, without the extra flour additions. I reference kneading here in quotes because what I did was much closer to molestation. Without extra flour to stop the dough from sticking, I just squished and squashed the mass between my hands. The recipe instructed me to knead until the dough was smooth and elastic, and not sticking to my hands. I tried to ignore the final detail and scraped the globs from between my now-webbed fingers, with no idea what smooth and elastic dough should look like.

My original bread baking inspiration and pride in myself was based on my decision that I needn't drive to the store to pick up bread to have with dinner - I could just bake a homemade loaf! Shocking confidence, really, given the fact that I had previously only baked one brick of heavy dough where far more ended in the compost than in our bellies. Having decided it would be easier, and I guess more fun, to bake a loaf at home than go to the store, I had to stop my three-hour process of bread-making to drive the four minutes to the grocery store down the road and buy a bag of flour.

My intention was to enjoy fresh bread with last night's reheated leftovers, a worthy goal that I would have realized wasn't feasible if I had read the recipe more carefully and calculated the second hour of rising - putting bread readiness around 9:15pm.

It has, at least, turned out to be a pretty tasty dessert.