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