My Bread Miracle

It's a miracle.  I made bread!  Yes, some of you know that I have been making my own bread for a while.  Something happened when my household went from 2 kids to 6 kids 8.5 months ago.  I stopped making bread.  I stopped doing a lot of things besides the basics.  Since you can actually buy bread at the store pretty easily, it is not considered a basic in my book.

That I made bread again was not the real miracle, though.  The real miracle is that it is at least partially edible.

Let me tell you how my first shot back at making bread went:

It was late Friday afternoon, and, out of nowhere, I decided to make bread.  I don't know what came over me.  I don't know why.  I just decided to go for it.

I have a recipe for bread that includes left over grains, and I had some left over brown rice.  Perfect!  I completed the first couple steps.  Perfect!  I let it rise and even set the timer so I couldn't totally forget all about it.  That's thinking ahead, Melani!

Once it was done rising, it was time to give four baths.

Bread on hold.

After baths, it was time to take the kids to TKD.

Bread still on hold.

When I got back from TKD, there were four kids needing to get to bed.

Bread still on hold.

Whew!  Kids in bed and time for bread.

Wait!  I have no bread flour for the next step.  That's OK, I think I just need to add some gluten (which I do have) to the all purpose flour, and it will work well enough.

Wait!  I'm about out of all purpose flour, too.  Shucks.  I did see that you can substitute some buckwheat flour for some of the bread flour.  Good.  I do have buckwheat flour. That's right.  I have gluten and buckwheat flour in the house but no all purpose flour.  Makes sense, right?

It's getting late by this time.  5 kids are in bed, and Jon and Brishen have gone to see a movie.  I consider giving up.  I really consider it.  Instead, I add some buckwheat flour, however I don't want to dirty another measuring cup so I just put some in and then some more.  Then I add some of the last all purpose flour, too.  I have no clue how much I've added because I couldn't bear to have a dirty measuring cup.  Let's not mention that the entire floor and counter are sprinkled (heavily) with flour already, so I'm not sure why a dirty measuring cup would have made a difference.

I finally get it to a decent consistency, I think.  Shoot.  This recipe is specific about kneading it by hand for 20 minutes.  I'm a pioneer woman at heart, so I set the timer again and start kneading.

12:34 left of my 20 minutes of kneading, and I decide that I am not a pioneer after 9pm.  It goes in the mixer, even though it will likely burn out the motor.  12 minutes and 34 more seconds pass.  My mixer is hot, but still doing its job.

It's only now that I realize that I have to let it rise TWO MORE TIMES. It's past my bedtime, which, honestly, is anytime I sit in a chair after the four little ones are in bed.  How will I last through two more rises?

 And then I actually have to cook it.

I'm tired!  I've fallen asleep in the chair a couple of times already.

I rally on, let it rise, separate it into its pans and let it rise again.  I even cook it.  There are naps here and there between innings.

There is nothing as yummy as hot bread out of the oven, but once I got that bread out of the oven, I had no desire to look at it again.  I went to bed.

The resulting loaves don't look that great.  They are a little flat.  They are buckwheat-ish in color.  They smell bold.

But, guess what?  The kids are eating it.

And asking for more!

And more!

It's not my best bread, for sure, and my best bread isn't even that great.

But it is my miracle bread.  It's a miracle that I decided to give it a shot again with all these little ones under foot.  It's a miracle I pieced together enough ingredients to make it resemble a loaf.  It's a miracle I didn't give up after step two or step three or step four point eight.

That's right, miracles come in all shapes and sizes--even sort of flat buckwheatish bread loaves.