Cabin Fevers

daphne on October 12, 2009

Ahhh, Monday.  Delightful wonderful peaceful Monday morning. Two children, up and out of the house before 7:30.  And my sentence has been lifted.

I’ve been under lock-down.  House arrest. For eight eternally long days.  No, you’re right. I shouldn’t exaggerate.  Why just the other day I was allowed out to bolster our stock of Children’s Tylenol and decongestants.

I wouldn’t dream of complaining.  Nope. Not me.  After all it’s just the flu.  The feverish, coughing, whining, icky flu.  In the scheme of things, it wasn’t all that bad.  At the very least it is over.  And just when a shimmer of bright lining hovered within reach, when sanity seemed possibly to be lurking around the next bend; just when it seemed safe to let the children venture out of each other’s company and into the world at large, this happened–

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You can’t hear it, but that’s the sound of Mother Nature laughing as she dumped snow all over my plans to air out the children.  By which I mean dangling them by their germy little ankles in the branches of our glorious autumnal trees where a gentle clarifying breeze might blow on through.   Breathtaking, right?  As in, they will be so busy gulping in lung-fulls of fresh air that they will have no voice to complain that so-and-so spit on me when she brushed her teeth and SHE TOUCHED ME and ahhhhhhh, I’m so over house arrest.

Breathe in. Breathe out.  I can do this.  If Mother Nature throws me freezing temps and whiny children, I just have to reach a bit deeper into the old parenting tool box.

And so we made a cozy fire.

And drank hot cocoa with little marshmallows.

And I let them make their own baguettes.

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Before you toss too much credit my way, I should confess that this bread is not only delightfully tasty and good at distracting unruly children, but it’s also unbelievably simple to make.  It’s a one-bowl, no kneading kid-pleasing kind of recipe.  I got it from my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day cook book.  Don’t be alarmed; I’ve come a long way since my initial attempts based on a hastily transcribed recipe from my mother resulted in that Not-So-Consumable Crusty Shards of Glass Bread.

Here is the basic recipe.

And just 20 minutes later, we had our warm, aromatic results.

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I also had two smiling children, mouths so full of homemade bread that their ability to bicker was drastically reduced.

And like the softly whirling, sparkling twinkle of the fresh falling snow, peace, sweet, silent peace, at last descended upon our home.

Crusty homemade bread

daphne on October 11, 2009

Ingredients

  • 3 cups of lukewarm water
  • 1 ½ Tablespoons yeast (less at altitude.  I use 1 1/4) T)
  • 1 ½ teaspoons salt
  • 6 ½ cups of all purpose flour

Directions

This makes enough for about 4 loaves. The dough can be refrigerated and used as you go, so you can have fresh bread for dinner anytime.

  1. In a large bowl of very large tupperwear add the water, yeast and salt.
  2. Mix in the flour, using a wooden spoon until the dough just comes together and is uniformly damp without dry patches.
  3. Cover loosely and allow to rise for 2 hours.

Baking Time—

  1. Dip your hands in flour, and generously dust your work surface with flour.
  2. Pull off a chunk of dough—about a softball size makes 2 medium sized baguettes, or a nice round loaf.
  3. Manipulate the dough into the shape you want, incorporate enough of the flour so the dough is not sticky.
  4. Put it on a baking sheet, dusted with corn meal or another granular flour.  Let it rise another 20 minutes.
  5. Preheat oven to 450 , with an empty broiler tray on the lowest oven rack. ***NEVER USE A GLASS CASSEROLE INSTEAD OF A METAL BOILER TRAY.  YOU WILL END UP WITH THIS NOT-SO-TASTY RECIPE INSTEAD!
  6. Put the bread in the oven, and pour one cup of water into the boiler tray.  Let bake for about 20 minutes—less for thin baguettes, more for thick round loaves.