Bread

I don't know what you're talking about. I've been blogging with a perfectly reasonable frequency.


As you may know, James is terrified of our vacuum cleaner. It turns out that he is also frightened of the bread machine. I made homemade bread yesterday. I used to make bread more often, but I hadn't in at least a year. Our bread machine was a wedding gift from my Mom. (I think it was a wedding gift. Maybe it was from a bridal shower. At any rate, I think it was from Mom. Thanks, Mom.) We used it occasionally during our year in the tree-house apartment, but then we used it a lot when we moved to North Carolina.

On Sundays especially, I would get up and get a loaf prepared before we left for church. (This was back during the days when J and I would go to church together, and sometimes we'd even go and not be responsible for being in charge of anything or playing any musical instruments.) We'd come back home to our little first-floor apartment, and the whole place would smell like fresh warm bread. Ahh...

I don't think there was room for it when we lived at St. Vivian's, and then it spent a long time atop the refrigerator when we moved to our current apartment. It's hard for me to reach on top of the refrigerator, especially when I'm holding James. He's a lunger.

Anyway, I wrote a blog in January about our microwave, and how much J disliked it. Pax, being the kind and generous brother that he is, was touched with compassion at the story. He offered us the use of their microwave, and said it would also be a good excuse to get into the nice new one that they received as a wedding present but couldn't justify opening while their slightly older model still worked.

NOTE TO BENEVOLENT FAMILY MEMBERS: Boy, I sure feel sorry for J! She's a good sport about it, but I can tell that she wishes we had piles of cash lying around. $50s and $100s mostly. Wouldn't that be great if someday we just had piles of cash? And James could play in them too? And maybe also a Monke rotary trumpet with the C air-vent key and a professional flugel and a C shepherd's crook cornet? But really, just the cash would be fine...

So anyhow, one afternoon when we took James over to visit his Uncle and Aunt we loaded up their old microwave into the back of the P.T. Cruiser, eager to bring it home and see if it did a better job than the fading Sunbeam.

JOKE FROM JULIE'S BROTHER:
Two drums and a cymbal fell off a cliff...

But seriously, we loaded the new microwave into the back of the Cruiser. And it rode around back there for about a week. Then we took it out and brought it inside, and it sat on the kitchen table for about another week. But THEN we threw out the old microwave and plugged it in, and because it was a good bit bigger than the older model, there was enough storage space on top to put the basket of crackers AND the bread machine. As it turns out, this microwave is a VERY POWERFUL piece of high-tech culinary weaponry. Our food has been regularly too hot since we've been using it, and we've even been reducing our usual cooking times by several minutes. It's a great problem to have. James has even given up pressing his nose to the front of it, I think mostly because he can't see anything spinning.

But as I was saying, the bread machine is now accessible again. And that's how I found myself making bread yesterday. I mixed up the ingredients for french bread while holding James and spilled minimal yeast on the floor. I'd say that given the floury mess we could have made, a couple grains of fungus were the yeast of our worries.

Then I loaded the pan into the machine, changed the setting to "white 2lb loaf" and hit Start. The machine came on and James just about jumped out of my arms. He went running out of the kitchen and watched the source of the funny noises from the doorway. When I picked him up and tried to show him what was happening inside the machine, he clawed his way over my shoulder to lean away.

But the bread turned out nicely. We even have real butter in the house, so it was delicious when it first came out of the machine. (May we continue to forget about country crock when we visit the grocery store.) But now its stale. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to store homemade bread so that it doesn't go hard within hours? (Note: J does not accept "Have six kids so that there's never any left after a few hours" as a valid suggestion.) Also, I enjoyed my bread-making adventure and am looking for new tweaks and recipes. (Calvus, are you reading this?) Oh, and James wants to visit somebody until the machine goes on top of the fridge again.