A Writer Afoot » baking

Release day!

Barbara Samuel — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 12:00:43 +0000

HOW TO BAKE A PERFECT LIFE

by Barbara O’Neal

Available TODAY in trade paperback from your local retailer, or these on-line venues

Also available as an ebook for Kindle, and Nook and other formats.

READ MORE ABOUT IT

A beautiful loaf

Barbara Samuel — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:20:18 +0000

Jack had to have a bit of surgery this week (he’s fine, he’s fine!) and when I got home from finding out, I didn’t even take off my sweater. I gravitated to the kitchen and started pulling out flour. This is the result, a wheaty loaf, using a small amount of buckwheat in a poolish starter.

Orienteering, baking up a new book and Aha Moment

Barbara Samuel — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:33:14 +0000

I’ve been baking up a new book that I superstitiously can’t talk about yet, but having a blast and think you will love it madly, too. Haven’t had much time to blog properly, though I’ll have a little more time this week.

Saturday, I went to an orienteering event but bombed out badly on the orange course. Not sure why it was so wretched, except that I lost my confidence almost right out of the gate and couldn’t seem to recover. It’s a hard area, but I was defeated before I began–I defeated myself–you know where that leads, right? Nowheresville. Which is where I was. Lost in the woods with no idea where the stupid flag was, on a beautiful day when I could have been just hiking. Enjoying myself instead of getting so frustrated all the time. Why, why, why do I keep torturing myself, Self? I asked. Self decided it would be safer not to answer.

I consulted my map, oriented myself to find a road, and stomped into a clearing at the top of a mountain and had to stop grousing just to look around. At the Rockies, all around me. The open stretch of green grassy land in front of me, dotted with zillions of wildflowers because it’s been so wet this year.

But all the way back to the start, I was furious with myself. Okay, almost in tears if you want to know the truth. It was hot and I failed and I don’t like to fail and I can’t seem to GET this and I really want to. I love being out there. I am exhilarated by finding a control. I need to get out of my way. And I decided I wasn’t going to give up and feel miserable–I would take my DNF on the orange….and go out on the yellow course, which is pretty easy and it would make me feel better to find controls.

So I did. And yeah, it was totally easy, but with the stress off, I could enjoy the pleasure of being outside with my compass and look at the map and see the topography and find controls and punch them and get back in a reasonable amount of time. Successful.

It’s good for us to undertake tests and challenges, to bite off more than we can chew. It leads to growth and good humor and maintains beginner’s mind, which is very good for writers and others.

But it’s also okay to step back sometimes, take a breather, go back to a place where you know you can succeed and rest there for a minute. Next time I try a course, I will do yellow first to build up my confidence, then go for an orange the same day. I will not give up, because it isn’t like this is something I can’t learn. Anyone can learn to orienteer. I might not ever be talented at it. I might not ever even be any good at it particularly, but I can master the skill and art of it well enough to be able to enjoy it.

Much like writing. Or life.

On that note, a “small world” moment: This afternoon, the Mutual of Omaha people were in Colorado Springs to tape “Aha Moments” which is a special thing they’re doing to create brand awareness. (Have you seen them? They are a lot of fun.) I taped mine, about writing, then came out of the trailer and there was a woman waiting to tape her moment. She said she knew me, that she read my blog sometimes. I was astounded, and pleased, and we started chatting, and it turns out she orienteers, too! What are the chances we would meet at that trailer, back to back like that?

(By the way, the Aha Tour is going around the country, so you might have a chance to tape your moment, too. Or you can upload your own video at http://www.ahamoment.com/)

So I came home and looked up her blog, and I think all of you will enjoy her blog, too: Pam Burton is at http://theminimeinme.blogspot.com/ And Pam, when you drop by, a shout out to you! Fun to meet you today.

The heady alchemy of baking bread

Barbara Samuel — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:12:53 +0000

It’s a cold winter afternoon, the kind when winter blisters past the windows, turning everything blue. Inside, I am kneading bread. Not in a bread machine but with my own palms and wrists. The dough is whole wheat, heavy and thick, and it takes muscle to punch it down, to knead and fold and press, then turn it, fold it, press it again. Over and over. For such a glutinous dough, it will take ten minutes to break it down, then a couple of hours to rise and lighten, another round of kneading before I nestle it into glass bread pans to rise one more time.

I love everything about baking bread, beginning with the geeky pleasure of yeast, a science experiment in every foil envelope. As a beginner, I read somewhere that you should sprinkle the yeast over a small dish of warm water into which a teaspoon of sugar had been dissolved, and it’s a trick that has never failed me—yeast that is too old or somehow flawed will not grow on this petri dish of food.

If the water is too hot, you will kill the yeast; if it is too cold, it won’t get moving. This matter of water temperature caused me no end of consternation for the longest time—what, exactly did lukewarm feel like? How would you know? In my early bread baking days, I might have spent every last dime on my little pile of ingredients and I had two very small boys to cart around, so going back to the store for yeast that I accidentally killed was not usually an option. I knew too hot was much more dangerous than not hot enough, so I’d err on the side of caution and wait anxiously for the bubbling evidence that the power behind the bread was actually going to work, that those sandy, heady granules were actually growing.

I fell so in love with yeast that my specialty became sourdough, which I grew in a pungent crock, loosely covered with cheesecloth, for days before baking. All the bubbling, boiling, living movement made me feel like a mad scientist, or maybe a medieval healer, tending to the village with my potions.

After the boiling came the mixing, flour and salt, butter or oil, water or sometimes milk. Then additions—oatmeal or raisins or spices; sugar or wheat germ or nuts—stirred into the sticky mix, making it heavy and cold.

And then comes the hard labor of kneading, which I am convinced could save the sorry soul of the worst degenerate; that simple, soothing thump and turn, fold and press, transforming glop into a smooth warm ball, as pliable and sleek as young flesh. Ten minutes of alchemy to work through a thorny problem or complain to the heavens or hum under your breath.A boy might sit at the table with you, kneading his own bread into edible shapes.

That baby bottom ball of dough then goes into an oiled bowl, covered with one of those very thin dishtowels that used to be so common and now are a little harder to find. Set the bowl in a warm place to rise. This is delicate in high altitudes—the rising can sometimes go very fast, but not if it is a very dry or cold day. Then you need to warm the oven a tiny bit, turn it off, and set the bowl inside for an hour or two, whenever the dough puffs up to twice its size and pushes at the towel you’ve put over it.

The last little bit of total fun comes in punching down that big pile of puffy stuff. Sometimes it lets go of a happy sigh as the air leaves it. To me it sounds like the bread knows its journey is nearly done. Now you knead it a little more and shape it into loaves that are tucked into pans to rise, or perhaps you want rolls today and just shape them into balls in your hand, or you’re going to be fancy and braid it. It rises again and then you bake it and it fills the house—the yard, the neighborhood—with that heady, promising, homey aroma.(I have often wondered if that perfume couldn’t sure a good many ills in the world—I mean, how can you yell at someone when your head is filled with that?) I imagine that it halted the fighting of two lovers, make a man rethink his departure from his family, smoothes the aching heart of a young girl.

At last, the bread is done, and of course, you must eat it the moment comes out of the oven, hot and dripping with butter or maybe a little jam. You can give it away, because there will always be more, more, more.

Have you ever fallen in love with a process?