Baking Bread at Midnight
Simple Joy #3
In the realm of mini-musings, what’s more perfect than tapping into one of the five senses for your simple joy of the day?
My weekly Italian loaf has always been store bought. Cooking from scratch is du jour in the atelier but bread is not something I’ve ever attempted. Until recently.
It took a few tries.
Actually, that’s a misnomer. Here’s what really happened: dough attempt #1 barely rose and basically tasted gross when cooked. Threw in the garbage. Dough attempt #2 did not rise, was a gooey mess, and had to be tossed in the garbage. Dough attempt #3 rose a little, tasted better, but the loaf was so low that slices looked like biscotti.
Failure in the kitchen!
I thought I might be relegated to a lifetime of store bought bread.
Big sister to rescue with a gorgeously simple recipe for ‘overnight bread.’ All you have to do is mix your four ingredients, cover, and let it all rise overnight. After letting the dough additionally set, wrapped, for an extra 30 minutes it’s off to cook in the range via a covered Dutch oven. And that’s it. A perfectly delicious round loaf every time. No rolling. Rise and cook. BAM.
Now I get to enjoy the simple pleasure of that aroma….
BAKING BREAD.
Except, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and bread baking in the oven is linked to late nights for me. It’s not unusual for it to be 11PM with me sitting at the laptop working on travel agency vacation requests or jotting notes for a novel in progress while a loaf is en route to becoming my midnight snack. It’s the quietude of midnight that gets me.
Fresh bread is comforting, a smell that humankind has relished for nearly ten thousand years. Sampling a bit of crusty Italian fresh out of the oven, dipped in a tiny bit of olive oil, was my simple joy last night.
Yours truly,
Vivie V.
P.S. In case anyone would like the recipe….
