I learned how to bake soda bread from my mother when I was still in school, but never really got into making bread until I was in university and had a kitchen I could use myself. One of my friends in my final year of university was a baker, and taught me how to make a yeast dough. It was our form of socialising – we’d bake bread, drink tea, and listen to great music. We have a wonderful little rivalry over who makes the best bread, eventually agreeing that we would settle on the fact that she makes better yeast breads and I make better soda breads.
The last few years I’ve not made much bread at all, after hitting a peak in my breadmaking when I lived in the UK, but I’ve been getting back into it lately in a big way. I think I’ve made a loaf every two or three days for the past few weeks. It started out with my quest to get better at pizza doughs, as I’m a big fan of making pizza from scratch. Every week I had a Pizza & Dr Who evening, which is pretty self explanatory I think.
But, finding good strong white flour has been the lifesaver of my breadmaking, and the recent loaves have been really delicious. My mother even commented on my most recent loaf saying that it was as good as one bought in a shop.
I think I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy swimming. You have to set aside some part of your day to do it, and there’s a mindlessness to the repetitive physical action that you stop consciously thinking about – your mind is free to wander elsewhere and not have to give it its full attention. Kneading a dough is also a wonderful way to work out frustrations ;) There’s also the fact that you get a really tasty loaf out of it and the house fills with the smell of baking bread. Delicious stuff.
I usually use it to break up piano practice – I go and play for an hour or so while the dough is rising, or use that time to make myself a meal. Now that I’m happy with my basic brown and white breads (I’ve made a successful wholemeal loaf most recently) I’m trying to decide what to try and add next to my arsenal of bread making.
