My readership has officially gone international, meaning my mom reads my blog now. (Thanks, Mom!) She and my dad have been living in Peru since February, doing lots of nice things for people, including helping them recover from last year's devastating earthquake, among other things. Of course, she had to email me after my last post to point out that it wasn't like I hadn't seen her bags o' Costco yeast a million times. I just hadn't bothered to ask where she got them. Which is true. The older I get, the more I realize there are a lot of things I never bothered to ask her, like how she managed to stay sane with a house full of 8 kids (when I have enough trouble with 2) and why she ever let me out of the house during grades, oh, 5 through 10. (Let's just say I went through a bit of an awkward phase and leave it at that, okay? Note to self: overalls were never a good look for you.)
Besides, I just assumed the yeast came from the same place all the food in my parents' house comes from: The Storage Room. That magical place where food spontaneously appears, to be prepared and consumed by whoever shows up at the house hungry, which during my starving student years was perhaps more often than I care to admit. Ah, the days when I used to "grocery shop" in my parents' 2-year food supply...(Again, thanks, Mom and Dad.)
So I've been going through yeast like crazy, ever since I read about this bread book on, oh, a half-dozen or so different blogs. I checked it out at the library, and I must say I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself and my ability to put something like this on the table:
Granted, the method is pretty fool-proof, but, still, I'm making bread! (Which reminds me, that's another thing I never bothered to learn from my mother...sheesh, Mom, what *did* you teach me?)
The book is full of recipes for different kinds of artisan bread (not sure what makes it "artisan"--is it a fancy word for rustic?--wait, here's a definition), all based on the concept of pre-making a large amount of dough, storing it in the refrigerator, and using it as needed for fresh-baked bread in only minutes of active time a day. I've tried only the basic recipe so far as I haven't had any rye or oat flour on hand (it's called "On-Hand Modern" for a reason, i.e. I'm lazy...and cheap), but it's a keeper. And I intend to try the other ones as well. Just as soon as I buy the book. (I had to take my copy back to the library. Apparently other people didn't bother to learn to bake bread from their mothers either.)
