The Adventures of Bread

When I was growing up, we always had homemade bread. I remember learning to count making bread. I was really good at counting to 14 because that's how many cups of flour we put in bread. I LOVED the days that we'd come home to the hot bread smell and we'd talk my mom into cutting a loaf hot and slathering it with butter and honey. We always gave hot bread to our neighbors for Christmas. They were always so excited to see us. I don't think I really appreciated how much that meant to them until I left home. I remember taking homemade loaves of bread down to college and making everyone on my floor jealous. Then after I got married, I didn't have access to homemade bread anymore.

A few months ago, we were having a dinner that rolls sounded really good with. My mom had asked my friend for her roll recipe when she was up here taking care of me after a surgery, so I had a roll recipe and I decided to go for it. How hard could it be, right? Wrong! My first attempt ended up in the garbage because she used instant yeast in her recipe and I didn't realize that my yeast wasn't instant, so I ended up with a bunch of little hard granules in my dough. After at least 20 calls to my mom and switching the recipe around to make it work with my non-instant yeast, I finally ended up with yummy smelling and looking rolls for dinner. My family was so impressed. They ate half of the 20 that I cooked. I was putting dinner away while Owen was still eating (he's always my last one full). I turned around and there was an Owen-sized fingerprint in every roll that was left. I'm still not sure what he was doing, but I was NOT happy!!We've had rolls again since and I let Owen know that if he wanted to have rolls again, he better keep his fingers out of them. He did much better. Apparently he satisfied his curiosity that one time. He is definitely his dad's boy when it comes to food. He can't just eat it, he has to dissect it and come up with new ideas of how different foods can go together. I'm sure in his mind, those leftover rolls were just begging to be dissected.

A while later, I was craving my mom's homemade bread. I decided to try it out. She told me that one batch usually makes 4 loaves, so that is what I planned on. Once again, about 20 phone calls later, I had loaves of bread. I didn't just have loaves, I had LOAVES!!! Apparently my loaf pans were smaller than my grandma's loaf pans (who figured out this recipe). They were huge. I also had a hard time kneading the dough and I just thought I was a wimp because I hadn't been beating the bread every week for 20 years, but it turned out that my flour is a lot drier, so I don't need as much. For all the setbacks, I think my first loaves of bread turned out pretty good.

My huge loaves.

Not too shabby, eh? Looks like I did an okay job of kneading.

One funny thing is that Zoey has decided that she LOVES "nice, hot bread." That is what she now calls homemade bread. It doesn't matter if it's nice and hot, been around for a few days, or just out of the freezer. It's pretty funny for her to ask for nice hot bread, then when you go to toast it, have her say, "NO, I want it cold!" Every time anyone brings over bread, rolls, garlic bread, etc. she gets excited and asks if they brought us "nice, hot bread."