Our Daily Bread

 

Our schools in the area are all on Spring Break. Because the overwhelming bulk of my job from August through May is school attendance meetings, I am on break for most of the week as well.

My written To Do list this week ranges from mundane (clean off my desk) to major (do my dad's 2020 taxes). On the unwritten list are the small tasks—the myriad of things that anyone's day may hold—that get slotted into the leftover bits and pieces of my days, depending on my energy, what else the day holds (or held if it is evening), and how my myeloma and I are dealing with each other that day. These are things that in any day, week, or month often fall to the wayside, only to crop up again and continue to crop up until done or eradicated. 

On my unwritten list today was to make bread; I have been making most of our bread for the last several weeks. (Okay, I've been baking some of our bread for the last several weeks, with my efforts supplemented by the stunning baguettes and other loaves our next door neighbor Adam brings over. His wife Maura is responsible for a flow of baked desserts from their house to ours, with help from their young daughter Alice. Have I mentioned what GREAT neighbors we have?) [Yes, we reciprocate. My sourdough peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies are always a huge hit.] 

I thought I would duplicate the sourdough loaf I made last week in the bread machine, a behemoth Warren bought years ago. I go between using the machine and making bread by hand, depending on my energy levels and my myeloma burden. I tweaked the recipe some, remembering that the first time I had had to add additional liquid, which I did. 

Two hours into the process, Warren and I in our respective upstairs offices said, almost simultaneously, "I smell smoke." I elaborated, "I smell burning bread." We rushed downstairs to find a kitchen full of smoke, a bread machine that belched smoke the moment I lifted the dome, and...yeah. 

In thinking over the tweak, I just now realized I doubled the extra water. Oops.

I carried the still smoking machine outside, where it still is an hour later. Warren went around opening windows. And then I started another batch of bread the old-fashioned way. It is rising (or should be) as I type. I'll check on it shortly. At some point I will start to tackle cleaning the bread machine.

All that has gone through my head is the old Smith Barney ad with John Houseman. Remember that one? "They make money the old-fashioned way. They earn it." Only in my case, he is sneering at my efforts: "April, you need to make bread the old-fashioned way. Not burn it."

Thanks, John.

Closeup of the overflow and burn pattern. Sigh.