Bread and Other Things

Day Two of our school break involved quite a few cliff-hanging chapters of Cricket in Times Square (My kids are loving this one. Maybe yours will too?), chili simmering on the back of the stove all afternoon, brainstorming ideas for creating our own newspaper (There will be articles written about the neighbors’ sheep and their silly antics, of course, and a daily column on the meals that we eat. Copies will be twenty-five cents, which I think is quite reasonable as Jacob initially suggested two dollars each. I told him he couldn’t charge that much unless he included coupons.), basking in the sunshine, the world’s longest afternoon Uno game on my bed, a goldfish burial, and some bread baking.

I typed up a couple of my favorite bread recipes last summer, by the way. And linked to a couple of others. The bread from yesterday was one that I linked to toward the bottom of that post – I started it in a bread machine and did the rolling out, shaping, final rise, and baking by hand. I think sometimes the bread machine is so helpful in kneading bread with less flour than I would need if I did it by hand, which makes the bread better-tasting. The down sides are that I don’t get to knead the bread (which I truly enjoy doing) and I can only make one loaf at a time, which seems like such a waste.

Ben and I made some serious television rules recently. For ourselves and for our children. And it has been like a gust of fresh air blowing through our home. I’d like to tell you more about that, but maybe some other time.

Happy Wednesday!