The stinging hail and sleet of the New England storm front started on Friday. Trapped inside by the raging blizzard, I decided it would be a good weekend for baking bread. It’s been half a century since I’ve tackled bread and back then my contribution was to mix the yeast and sugar into a sweet smelling paste. My mother’s bread rolls were famous around town both for their lovely soft texture and sheer number. She baked them for our picnics among the sheep in Macclesfield Forest and by the hundreds for shindigs at the Midlands Electricity Board (MEB) working men’s social club. Baking for the latter was an army maneuver: the kitchen became the war room with Mum the General. The dough was pounded, stretched, sprinkled with flour and then,in some strange initiation rite, everyone in the family had to be chased around the kitchen and slapped with it. The kitchen smelt wonderful. The rolls were turned out in batches by the truckload and packed off to the club.
Unfortunately the recipe went with Mum to the grave and so now I am experimenting to conjure it back up. I like it. It feels like the good old fashioned biochemistry, which I sorely miss now that I am no longer “beavering at the bench” but tied to my desk begging for vanishing funding. My first attempt with dried yeast was a disaster. So last week I ordered a 1lb cake of fresh yeast from a website deceptively listed as “New York Bakers” but which at check out turned out to be in San Diego. I excitedly tracked the course of my yeast as it flew in via fed ex arriving under the radar just before the blizzard struck. On Saturday afternoon, as the temperatures dropped, we rolled up our sleeves, turned on the bright red oven to get the kitchen toasty warm, and got cracking. This second attempt was not too bad – at least it rose and was edible, even passible, but in terms of my mother's gold standard we’re not there yet. The baps were too solid and cake-like. Perhaps it was because I used a bag of yellow flour that said it was perfect for Pizza dough. Apparently bread likes gluten-rich flour made from wheat from Canada or the Russian Steppes - Italian strains wont do. Perhaps it also needed some lard (another thing that’s hard to get in New York). Still I’ve got 15 oz of yeast left to get it right, my kitchen smells like heaven and the neighbors are salivating at the door.
