Making bread on a snowy day

It’s Tuesday and normally I’m learning to build ukuleles on a Tuesday. To do this I drive about an hour north. Today it’s snowy and the highways are partially covered. There’s an accident on Stoney Trail so I’ve decided to stay home. That’s the wonderful thing about being retired: nobody is depending on me to make my way through the snow. The roads probably aren’t that bad and, no doubt, I’ve driven in worse but it’s fabulous that now, I simply don’t have to. There are challenges to growing older and there are also great opportunities.

So what am I doing with my bonus day at home? I thought I’d spend every moment in the shop and then I got sidetracked. Wouldn’t it be a good day to bake bread and have the house infused with that smell that was an ever-present one as I grew up? We could buy bread and sometimes do. We both love it and tend to eat way too much of it so we mostly ignore the temptation to buy. The same goes for a bread machine. We have had two. They were wonderful and it was way too easy to make bread that came out flawless every time - well most times, unless you forget to put the paddle in which results in a burned stack of ingredients when you get home and expect a lovely light loaf of bread to have with chili for supper. In an effort to eat less bread and other carbohydrates we gave the machine away about six years ago.

With the onset of Covid we are looking not only for comfort food but also for comfort smells and activities. When I lived in Banff I baked all my own bread. It was a calming thing to do on snowy weekends when I didn’t have to go into work. It also helped to warm up the draughty suite which had only a gas heater in the living room. Mind you, near the gas heater was a great place to set the bread to rise. 

Mum used to put hers over one of the heat registers.I’m not sure I’ve found the ideal place to raise bread so, for the moment, it sits on the counter. With a convection oven and quick-rise yeast making bread doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to and every once in a while I make a couple of loaves. As so often happens I just thought I’d check Google to see what was new in baking pans. The ones I inherited work very well and I’m sure they were in service before I was born. Somehow the loaves I’m making don’t seem to fill the pans as much as I’d like them to. I was wondering if there were slightly smaller pans available. And down the rabbit hole I go.

crust is a bit dark (tastes good though)

There are all sorts of bread pans available most of them the same size as the ones I have. There are steel bread pans with no coating, silicone pans that need no coating, aluminum pans with non-stick coating, bread pans with lids (why would you need a lid), and bread pans that make 4 mini-loaves in a single pan. Or, I could just form the bread into a round loaf and throw it in the oven. We have to be very careful about non-stick coatings, most of which are toxic to birds if they get overheated. Much as I threaten Odie with the soup-pot from time to time, I’d hate for anything to happen to him. So today I’m not buying any new bread pans and the bread is rising in the heirloom pans as have so many loaves before it. Maybe the next time I’ll make a round loaf or a baguette-shaped loaf. For today, it’s two mostly whole-wheat loaves.I’ll experiment with slightly longer rising times and other places to set the bread to rise. The texture of the bread has been dense but not overly so for whole wheat. I’d like to try sourdough again but hesitate because you have to feed it and use it regularly and we really don’t need to eat that much bread. Still the idea is intriguing. Stay tuned.