2019-05-03-making-bread

blog/2019-05-03-making-bread/_article.md

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Making Bread"
+description: "...because I've got some free time now. 🍞"
+category:
+tags: [baking]
+---
+
+Having recently started my "gardening leave" between positions, I have some more personal time
+available. I'm planning to stay productive, contributing to some open-source projects, but it also
+occurred to me that despite [talking about](https://speice.io/2018/05/hello.html) bread pics, this
+blog has been purely technical. Maybe I'll change the site title from "The Old Speice Guy" to "Bites
+and Bytes"?
+
+Either way, I'm baking a little bit again, and figured it was worth taking a quick break to focus on
+some lighter material. I recently learned two critically important lessons: first, the temperature
+of the dough when you put the yeast in makes a huge difference.
+
+Previously, when I wasn't paying attention to dough temperature:
+
+![Whole weat dough](/assets/images/2019-05-03-making-bread/whole-wheat-not-rising.jpg)
+
+Compared with what happens when I put the dough in the microwave for a defrost cycle because the
+water I used wasn't warm enough:
+
+![White dough](/assets/images/2019-05-03-making-bread/white-dough-rising-before-fold.jpg)
+
+I mean, just look at the bubbles!
+
+![White dough with bubbles](/assets/images/2019-05-03-making-bread/white-dough-rising-after-fold.jpg)
+
+After shaping the dough, I've got two loaves ready:
+
+![Shaped loaves](/assets/images/2019-05-03-making-bread/shaped-loaves.jpg)
+
+Now, the recipe normally calls for a Dutch Oven to bake the bread because it keeps the dough from
+drying out in the oven. Because I don't own a Dutch Oven, I typically put a casserole dish on the
+bottom rack and fill it with water so there's still some moisture in the oven. This time, I forgot
+to add the water and learned my second lesson: never add room-temperature water to a glass dish
+that's currently at 500 degrees.
+
+![Shattered glass dish](/assets/images/2019-05-03-making-bread/shattered-glass.jpg)
+
+Needless to say, trying to pull out sharp glass from an incredibly hot oven is not what I expected
+to be doing during my garden leave.
+
+In the end, the bread crust wasn't great, but the bread itself turned out pretty alright:
+
+![Baked bread](/assets/images/2019-05-03-making-bread/final-product.jpg)
+
+I've been writing a lot more during this break, so I'm looking forward to sharing that in the
+future. In the mean-time, I'm planning on making a sandwich.

blog/2019-05-03-making-bread/index.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+slug: 2019/05/making-bread
+title: "Making Bread"
+date: 2019-05-03 12:00:00
+authors: [bspeice]
+tags: []
+---
+
+Having recently started my "gardening leave" between positions, I have some more personal time
+available. I'm planning to stay productive, contributing to some open-source projects, but it also
+occurred to me that despite [talking about](https://speice.io/2018/05/hello.html) bread pics, this
+blog has been purely technical. Maybe I'll change the site title from "The Old Speice Guy" to "Bites
+and Bytes"?
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+Either way, I'm baking a little bit again, and figured it was worth taking a quick break to focus on
+some lighter material. I recently learned two critically important lessons: first, the temperature
+of the dough when you put the yeast in makes a huge difference.
+
+Previously, when I wasn't paying attention to dough temperature:
+
+![Whole weat dough](./whole-wheat-not-rising.jpg)
+
+Compared with what happens when I put the dough in the microwave for a defrost cycle because the
+water I used wasn't warm enough:
+
+![White dough](./white-dough-rising-before-fold.jpg)
+
+I mean, just look at the bubbles!
+
+![White dough with bubbles](./white-dough-rising-after-fold.jpg)
+
+After shaping the dough, I've got two loaves ready:
+
+![Shaped loaves](./shaped-loaves.jpg)
+
+Now, the recipe normally calls for a Dutch Oven to bake the bread because it keeps the dough from
+drying out in the oven. Because I don't own a Dutch Oven, I typically put a casserole dish on the
+bottom rack and fill it with water so there's still some moisture in the oven. This time, I forgot
+to add the water and learned my second lesson: never add room-temperature water to a glass dish
+that's currently at 500 degrees.
+
+![Shattered glass dish](./shattered-glass.jpg)
+
+Needless to say, trying to pull out sharp glass from an incredibly hot oven is not what I expected
+to be doing during my garden leave.
+
+In the end, the bread crust wasn't great, but the bread itself turned out pretty alright:
+
+![Baked bread](./final-product.jpg)
+
+I've been writing a lot more during this break, so I'm looking forward to sharing that in the
+future. In the mean-time, I'm planning on making a sandwich.