D’ough!

I have just read teranika�s latest entry, wherein she expresses her joy at producing her first loaf of homemade bread, and I smiled. For years I baked my own bread, starting when I was still living at home with my parents having discovered some recipes in one of the local (T0r0nt0) newspapers and promptly realizing that I would never eat store-bought bread again. I made bread all through university, teaching several of my colleagues in the process, when we lived in Ann Arb0r as poor grad students (I was merely the wife of a grad student, but I feel like I earned a vicarious degree), and then through our various moves across the country as my husband took one sabbatical leave job after another, even after getting out of the hospital following the birth of our son, fresh caesarian stitches in my lower abdomen, going to the supermarket to fill the larder which had become painfully empty during my week away, and looking at what the bakery section had to offer and saying, “I can’t eat any of this stuff. I’ll make bread when we get home.”

This continued for a very long time. I would make three loaves at a time (my small hands can’t knead any more dough than that) at least twice a week, and we rarely bought bread; on occasion bagels, but I did make those too a few times and decided they were just too much work for the result. Besides, there is a Montreal-style bagel bakery in my city with a real wood-burning oven; why would I go to the trouble to make an inferior product?

No, my downfall happened when Colleen was our cleaning lady. She was also the Duchess’ cleaning lady, and my friend had acquired a bread machine, about which she raved, even though she wasn’t the one using it. Colleen confided in me that she too, who had also always made her own bread, had bought one, she was so impressed, the kind that had a regularly shaped loaf pan with two paddles, not the kind that made a tall loaf with just one paddle. It occurred to me that if Colleen could get a bread machine, then so could I, and I went out and bought the same kind.

Since then, I confess, I have made very little bread with my bare hands. It is just too easy to load up the pan with the raw ingredients, set the controls and press Start. Through trial and error I discovered how to make the perfect loaf of bread, always whole wheat, always delicious. It is almost as good as the bread I used to knead lovingly on the kitchen table. Someone who had never had the “before” would be hard pressed to find fault with the “after”. Still, I do hanker a wee bit after that sensation of the yeasted dough growing under my hands. Who knows, when this machine finally bites the dust, as I know it must some day, I’ll not bother replacing it.

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Anyway, that wasn’t what I was planning to report when I first logged into Diaryland. Hubby and I went to Costco and the mall this afternoon, my first trip there since before Christmas. It was crowded, but manageable. We bought gifts for his niece and nephew (scarf/hat/mitts for him, bath stuff for her) and mailed it right at the post office (they sell appropriately-sized boxes there, believe it or not), then exchanged the DVD he had bought for Buddy Boy but which was damaged, and then I dragged him to the leather store to buy a new jacket to replace the one he bought in NYC 15 years ago and which has holes and soon-to-be holes in the sleeves and shoulders. This was followed by a quick (but not quick enough) trip to the electronics store for a new tuner/amplifier for our stereo system (both speakers are working again). It turned out to be an expensive couple of hours.

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