My First Bread

I baked a bread. No, food shortages caused by people overbuying and overeating during COVID-19 lockdown didn’t force me to start making my own food, but maybe thanks to this pandemy I finally have some time to do so.

Frankly it’s all on my wife. Although I always wanted to try it, I was too lazy to learn about all the details. So when she brought this topic to the table I thought that maybe it’s now or never: she can learn everything and then she can teach me. Of course it was harder than that as I refused being taught because I like discovering things myself. A paradox. It’s not easy to bear with me.

So we ordered yeast and two types of flour (rye and wheat). In times of pandemy it was harder than it should be, but not impossible for a determined couple. Recipe on the other hand was easy to find - there are thousands of them on the internet. Now, after 2 weeks since our first bread, we have roughly 10 of them on our account. It means that we’re still amateurs, but very fulfilled ones. Plus every single of our breads tasted far better than the ones we bought before.

Baking is easier than I thought, especially amateur version which uses yeast instead of sourdough (but we’ll get there, don’t worry). It takes about 30 minutes of making a dough, then few hours until it proves, but it depends on the kind of bread, then 30-50 minutes of baking. We even started baking 2 breads at a time because otherwise the one huge loaf was too hard to cut even with our biggest knife and it was quickly getting old and stale.

After few initial trials we ordered 25 kg of flour. It was unexpectedly delivered in a huge white sack - looking exactly like you probably imagine huge white sack of flour. Let me tell you: 25 kg is no joke. It is big, it is heavy and it spills flour every time we try to move it. Every time I look at it I think about Settlers (the game) - these small, poor workers carrying white little bags around the village, without a single word, not even a curse. Yeah, bullshit.

So, bread is now officially checked-off from my list. Buns are next.