New Toy

From file written September 25, 1993

Early in my visit to Carli and Tom in August, Tom made a loaf of bread in their bread maker. I am sure you have seen one or have heard friends talk about them. You toss the ingredients in, the machine mixes, kneads, lets the bread rise, and bakes it. All you have to do is set the timer (within 13 hours) for the moment you want the finished loaf to emerge.

I decided that, expensive or not, I had to have one. We looked at the discount stores we were in the next day, but Tom and Carli gently dissuaded me. As Tom said, “You can buy a lot of loaves of bread for what a bread maker costs.” By the next morning I reluctantly had convinced myself that I didn’t want one.

Three days later, with the greatest of ceremony, Carli and Tom presented me with an enormous Christmas-wrapped box. Three guesses. I was absolutely astounded. They said that their main problem had been in talking me out of buying one without making me suspicious. I really did not have a clue.

 

Packing was an interesting project. The three of us decided it might be easiest for me to send the bread maker by UPS since I would have to pay duty anyway. That was before I found out that it would cost about $450! I let the packers repack the box, however, for safety, and now am the proud possessor of a heavy 20" cube box and three trash bags of “peanuts.”

As for the bedspread I bought on my shopping expedition, Carli donated an under-seat-size duffel she no longer uses. I could see no way the spread would fit in. “It’s all air,” Carli insisted, hauling and pushing and forcing the entire bedspread into a compartment one-third its apparent size. Furthermore, later, when several items seemed not to fit anywhere, she took the bedspread out, put two boxes with quart bottles of my stocking-wash liquid in the bottom, and was able to zip the bedspread back in, to my amazement.

I had a spare duffel-type expandable suitcase with me. I managed to get the rest of a year’s shopping, including the bath mats, into it. I had arrived with my two regular brown bags, both squashed by their straps because there was so little in them. I left with five pieces. The garment bag was so bloated that only the straps held it together.

 

As you know, the Major Trauma of trips comes with facing the Customs Officer in the Belize airport. Somehow my luggage looked more numerous, larger, and heavier than it had when I wrestled with it in Carli and Tom’s guest room. Nowadays Customs is happy if you tell them you spent about $100, all on personal things, not things for resale.

This time the Officer cast a very skeptical eye over my bulging bags when I tried to pull that line. I immediately pointed to the box, told him it was a Christmas present, and declared my absolute joy at paying duty on the bread maker inside.

As the Customs Officer was writing up the ticket, I commented with dismay, “You aren’t going to charge me duty on the California sales tax, are you?”

The officer looked at me as sternly as his youth would permit and said, “I’m charging you duty on everything on the invoice. But,” he added, tossing his head toward the tower of luggage, “I’m not looking at all that.”

 

From file written November 19, 1993

Now, about Carli and Tom’s glorious addition to my life, the bread machine. I am working my way through the recipe book that came with it. I have to make certain adjustments because of our hot climate. The results have been extremely good, with some interesting exceptions.

Naturally, I watch the initial mixing and kneading because it is a fascinating process. One of my early loaves was practically soupy. I tossed in handful after handful of flour until it looked about right. Alex was able to identify my problem. I had thought the safest way to measure the required 3/4 cup of water was to fill my little plastic quarter-cup measure level three times. He showed me that three quarter-cup measures put into my Pyrex glass measure were well above the three-quarters line. I was outraged. It never had occurred to me that measurers that I bought in good faith might be telling me lies.

Then there was the time I wanted to bake a loaf of bread to send to María’s mother as a birthday present. I had baked a loaf of my “standard” recipe for María and Alex on the Saturday. It was picture-book gorgeous. I repeated the recipe for María’s mother on Sunday, and it rose to half the size. I cooled down the bread maker and started a second loaf. It barely rose to the top of the container. Obviously, I had a bad package of yeast. I had used the last of my first package on María and Alex’s loaf. I refused to send either loaf as a present, though they were perfectly edible.

The next week I made a gorgeous loaf with new yeast, wrapped it in Glad Wrap, tied it with shiny ribbon, and sent it along.

 

My bridge friends gave me a hard time about the way I talked about the bread machine, saying that they hadn’t seen any bread from it. When it was my turn for our Thursday group, I set up the machine to have a loaf of herb bread ready for four o’clock tea. To my horror, we had a power failure. I realized that the power had gone off just as the bread should have started baking, so hoped that it would not be too badly damaged.

When the power came back on, I read my instruction book and figured out how to program the machine to bake immediately. I had to guess at the time. Forty-five minutes later, the bread maker produced my herb bread, lots of herb bread. The bread had risen too long, of course, and even stuck to the top of the machine. However, after I finally was able to get it out, it was a gorgeous loaf. The extra rising didn’t hurt either taste or texture. My bridge group was properly appreciative, despite the fact that they had to wait overly long for their tea.

 

Alex came home from a recent trip to Miami and tossed a book into my lap…The Break Maker Gourmet. He said that he bought it for me for Christmas but figured I needed it right away.

The first thing I did was read it. It takes an astounding number of recipes to fill a book. Some were fascinating, and I will try them. A few were strictly off-the-wall, as if the author got absolutely frantic looking for fillers

I was thrilled to see a recipe for sourdough starter. I spent the week developing some and then baked my first sourdough loaf. It was absolutely delicious.

Since then I have baked two highly successful loaves of Pumpernickel Bread. One I took to Ann Crump last Saturday night when I went for an informal one-table bridge-and-supper.

I already am making plans to give loaves of bread as Christmas presents to people I don’t usually give presents, like Callie Young. It really is a self-indulgence. I have a marvelous time baking and can’t justify turning out loaf after loaf, even when I usually give half to María and Alex. My freezer is full of zip-lock bags with one or two or three slices of bread. I haven’t a clue what recipe I used until I thaw the bread, and sometimes not even then.

 

From letter dated December 27, 1993

I decided to bake Callie and Ford Young a loaf of white bread for Christmas. We don’t exchange presents, but Callie always brings me some of her gorgeous cookies.

It is hard for me to bake pure white bread because I don’t approve of it. I think that, if you go to the trouble of baking bread, at least a small percentage of the flour should be whole wheat or some equally healthy grain.

Anyway, I set the bread up to be baked after I got home from work Thursday afternoon. When I opened the machine, I was horrified. Here, finally, was that odd loaf in which the dough ended upside down with the seam side up and a resulting uneven top.

Uneven, hell; it had a top knot on one end.

I was sick. I knew I had to start over and bake another loaf. I left the misshapen loaf cooling on a rack. Every time I walked past it, I burst out laughing. It was the silliest, most self-important loaf of bread I ever had seen. Suddenly, I realized that Callie has a wonderful sense of humor and probably would adore the loaf.

I tied red and green ribbons around the top knot, then wrapped the loaf in Saran and finished it with a wide ribbon and a bow. I wrote a note of explanation. I took the loaf to Callie late Friday morning and explained the mishap. She thought is was marvelous. She said that the loaf looked like an animal, with the far end rounding down slightly lower and the top knot as a head.

When she came for coffee on Boxing Day, she told me that Ford made his entire lunch Thursday out of my bread and butter.

 

From letter dated December 5, 1994

I think I told you that I was devising a new recipe for María’s father. Once I had it standardized, I named it Pan Panta, to his delight. (You do remember that his name is Pantaleon, nicknamed Panta.) I tried it for the first time last week and think it is quite nice. I’m happy with my (now) three standards: Pumpernickel, Anadama (using recipe from son-in-law Tom), and Pan Panta.

 

From letter dated December 11, 1994

Bridge last night for Jimmy Murphy, Ann Crump, and my old bridge buddy Ian McIntosh. I set up pumpernickel to finish about 9:15. I gave it half an hour to rest and become sliceable, then served fresh warm bread with a plate of ham and cheese slices surrounded by small bowls of mayonnaise, mustard, butter, paté, and salmon spread. No one complained about make-your-own. It was a great success.

 

From letter dated May 28, 1995

Life has been much simpler since I developed a semi-production-line. Normally, I bake only on weekends. Even then, the time available is far less than the things I want to do in it. Inspiration came one day when I had retrieved all the plastic-bagged containers of flour, powdered milk, corn meal, etc., from the freezer and was painstakingly scooping correct amounts from each.

Now, I measure out the dry ingredients for two or three different loaves into two or three separate bowls at the same time. All the white flour measured into each bowl. Gluten flour into each, and so on. I am meticulous about sequence, knowing that disaster lurks if my mind strays. The combined ingredients for one or more spare loaves go into labeled freezer bags and stay in the freezer for a week or more until I am ready to bake them.

I glory in my new system. I keep a loaf of Pumpernickel and a loaf of Anadama in my freezer at all times. About every other week I bake Pan Panta for María’s father. And there are odd loaves for other people from time to time.

 

From fax send February 25, 1996

This is a bread weekend. I mixed up ingredients a week or so ago but had too much bread on hand to bake last weekend. This is my adaptation of my cookbook’s Oatmeal Applesauce recipe. I substitute 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour for white, honey for the sugar and increase the cinnamon. It is good. I baked a loaf for myself yesterday and have one in progress now for María’s brother Elmer. I don’t send bread to him as often as I did to their late father, but intend to keep him on my gift list.

 

From fax sent November 4, 1996

Sunday I mixed up a loaf for Pan Panta and started it in the bread maker. Three hours later I realized, to my horror, that we had a blackout. Fortunately, the bread was in the last rising stage. I was just about to call down to María to ask if I could use her oven to bake it when the power came on. My oven has an electric starter and cannot be lit with a match unless I want to burn the house down. I preheated the oven, left the dough in its own bread-maker container to bake, and prayed. In due course I extracted a perfect loaf.