Day Two is for Uh… Daft… Bakers?

Slurry	Into Emergency Home
Yikes!	First Knead
Filling!	Second Rise
“Leftovers”	Risen
Done!	Half-gone!

(No disrespect to the awesome, awe-inspiring Daring Baker sort. But, look: this is me, all right?)

It seemed like such a great idea, which should have been my immediate clue to think twice — nay, thrice about doing it. (But when have I ever done that?) Mac was off to some hideous epistemology class or something that nattered on for two whole hours, and I thought that it would be lovely to come home to some nice sticky rolls like he made for his September challenge. Due to another one of my UK baking measurement malfunctions (How much is a kilogram? Can’t be more than a pound… how about I order four kg. of sweet potatoes?), and my sad tendency to buy things in multiples (but it was two bags of oranges for £2!) we have quite a bit of butternut squash, oranges and sweet potatoes, and I am working on using them up speedily to prevent waste on top of stupidity. (!!) I figured that there must be a recipe that could successfully use two out of the three, and of course, there are legion. But I thought I should make some bread.

My first idea was to come up with a quick bread, but sweet potato breads that are quick breads tend to be too sweet and a bit heavy. I decided to do a yeast raised bread instead. That was a big jump, since I don’t bake bread much, and we have zero measuring ingredients, but I grew up with my mother whipping up bread from nothing, and I figured, “Eh, it should be fine.”

(Again: at that point, alarm bells should have been ringing. But no…I blame it on the weather…)

My first mistake was proofing the yeast. I boiled water in the kettle, then thought, “Ooh, too hot. I’ll kill my yeast.” So, I tossed in some cool water. By now I had about three and a half cups. Now it seemed too cool… You see where this is going? Into those four cups of water — not even still or purified water, but tap — I put in my packet of yeast. Then thought I should put in two — some yeasts proof slowly, and Mac seemed to have said something about that with the type of yeast we have…

After peeling the baked sweet potatoes, I mashed them. They didn’t mash as smoothly as they could have, owning to the fact that our oven is behaving bizarrely, and heating unevenly, so baking potatoes turn out rather odd. I tossed out the firmer chunks of the potatoes, mashed them, added my secret packet of tea, some salt, and about five tablespoons of raw sugar. Once the yeast looked remotely active, I mixed them together and added some flour to create my slurry. I added a cup of wheat bran as an afterthought, figuring it couldn’t hurt.

Mind you, I kept reassuring myself I was doing this exactly the same way Mac would have. Mind you, by the time I remembered to take a picture of anything, the first rise was finished — and I knew I was in trouble. Big trouble. Somehow, when Mac took a picture of his first rise, with the spoon in it and all? It didn’t look like it was about to overflow the pot and take over the kitchen. Mine… did.

“Ooh. Ooh, ooh, ooh,” I muttered under my breath, frantically stirring the dough. I realized that I couldn’t add flour to something already so… spongy. I was already using our largest pot, and so that meant — I was stuck. Just in time, I remembered the dishpan.

Dear ones, before you panic, you’d better believe I washed, scoured, dried, and scoured again that pan before an ounce of my beautiful dough touched it. I was mortified but it was the biggest vessel in the house, and it was …there. And so I used it.

Sweet potatoes are sticky. Dough is sticky. Sweet potato dough? Is almost impossible. I laugh at all of the recipes that say optimistically that one needs to set aside “a half cup of flour for kneading.” Oh, yeah? I added flour. I added what’s called “plain” flour, which is white. I added strong whole meal flour. I added the rest of the bag of the seeded flour. I must have added five cups, but the dough refused to do anything but be a sticky morass for quite some time. Finally, finally it began to show some sign of coming together. I let it rest for twenty anxious minutes while I did my best to clean up the disaster formerly known as the kitchen.

At six, I turned on the oven. I had about fifteen minutes before Mac walked in the front door, and was hopefully treated to that fresh-baked smell. I admit I cheated and put a bit of olive oil on my hands to make handling the sticky dough a bit easier. Like a pizza tosser, I stretched out the most uneven length of dough in bread making history, and decided on my filling — leftover cranberry sauce and a bit of marmalade. A piece of 70% dark chocolate bar seemed the perfect bittersweet compliment to the marmalade. I rolled it, sawed it into slices, and bodged it into the pan.

Whew.

I made plain rolls for the other pan, and tucked them in until I ran out of space. I reused aluminum pans from the store for the last odds and ends, which are huge, but will make great grab-and-go sandwich rolls for the week. By the time I heard a key in the door, one pan of bread was in, the rolls were settled and waiting their turn, and the dreadful dishpan was immersed and being cleaned. Success!

Well. Mostly success, anyway. I had no idea how the gems were going to taste, and I was jittery. Meanwhile, Mac was commenting rather acerbically that my rapid don’t-come-in-yet cleaning up strategy as being intended to leave him with the idea that I never made a mess. (Well — I don’t… Ahem!) And then, he started in his Master Baker questions.

“Look at that rise. Did you remember salt?”

Meekly. “Yes.”

“You used both packets of yeast?”

“Um. Yes.”

“And the purified water?”

“Er…”

By the time we got to such questions as “How much water did you use???” I was dancing out of reach, flipping songs on the CD, humming loudly, convinced if I ignored the Master Baker, he would go away. And he did — when the bread came out of the oven. He retired with a knife and a fork and a plate, and I heard nothing else.

And that’s really good enough for me.

(Note to Kirsten: See? I BAKED BREAD. How’s that for “stand by yer man?” Oh – and I made applesauce, too, with ginger and lemon, so it’s nice and soursweet. Yum.)

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