baking bread for the
romance, the smell, the texture,
that crunch of the crust

On a rainy weekend in the low country what do you think about besides thinking about what can some one do on a rainy weekend in the low country.

Sure we could go shopping.

Shopping in a resort town where prices reflect an income that doesn’t reflect mine.

There is always the library and that gets penciled in for later in the afternoon and more on that visit later this week.

My thoughts turned to baking bread.

Years ago I thought that a fine epitaph for my gravestone, back when I imagined having gravestone, would be, “He Baked Good Bread.”

And I went to work to learn.

I tried many recipes from Julia Child to a favorite Aunt.

I read a lot of books.

I watched a lot of video.

The best book on the subject for reading is Outlaw Cook, by John Thorne who chronicles his efforts to bake bread.

The type of bread someone would bake when bread made up 90% of some ones diet.

John Thorne is a great cooking writer.

He won me over when he wrote about how he published a newsletter with a photo of his kitchen.

So many of his subscribers (this was way before the world wide web and blogs and posts and such) responded in disbelief as it was a photo of a typical apartment kitchen with little counter space and tiny stove, that Mr. Thorne was moved to respond with the timeless phrase, “It is the cook … not the kitchen.”

(I think of that line a lot when I watch these magic chefs with their mega ‘kitchens’ on TV. Mise en place? Somehow I always thought it meant Mess In Place and stood for … you clean up your own mess )

It is a great cook book to read.

But it will break your heart to try and repeat.

He ends up with a wood fired concrete oven in the backyard.

I can say that I have arrived at a recipe that is my ‘go to’ recipe for baking bread.

It is the best.

It is simple.

It is simply, the best recipe for baking bread at home.

I can say that as it is my blog – my rules.

Sorry to say you do need two special pieces of equipment.

One is a cast iron loaf pan, but a small cast iron frying pan also works.

Why cast iron?

The only reason I got is that it works for me and that works for me.

The other piece of equipment is one of those stand mixers or mix-masters.

An expensive piece of kitchen equipment and I have to admit I inherited mine from my sister-in-law, Carla.

So take your mix-master if you got one and use your dough hook attachment.

In the mixing bowl dump 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt, a package of yeast, 3 and 1/2 cups of flour and 1 and 1/2 cups of warm water.

Just dump it all in there.

All at once.

Then run that mix master with the dough hook for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, take the bowl off and cover with a cloth for 1 hour so the dough can rise.

At some point, pre heat your over to 425.

After the dough has sat for an hour, get some flour on your counter and scrap the dough out onto the flour and knead into a ball.

Drop the dough into the cast iron pan and shove the pan into the hot 425 oven until brown (about 25 to 30 minutes).

Take the pan out and (if you got a nicely seasoned cast iron pan) dump the bread out onto a cooling rack and you are done.

Simple!

I let the bread sit for a few minutes then cut off some thick slices.

I ate the heal part of the loaf, covered with butter, right away as I love the crust.

Then I made up two plates with a warm slice of bread with cheese and some fruit for me and the Mrs. to have for lunch.

This morning I cut another thick slice and put it in toaster.

I watched.

The surface of my slice bread was rough, not smooth like a bakery loaf.

The tips of little fragments of bread started to brown first.

Almost like watching a sun rise and the golden toasted colors spread across the surface of the bread.

On the plate, the butter melted into the bread.

The kitchen smelled of warm bread and coffee.

Rough and crunchy.

Soft and chewy from the butter.

Simple touches to start a rainy weekend in the low country.

The romance of home baked bread.

But in the back of my mind, is a warning.

A voice reminding me, that a lot of romance was the luxury of choosing to bake some bread.

A voice reminding me, that a lot of romance was the luxury having the option to bake some bread.

I might not like it so much … if I had to do it.

nearest humans are
in a space station when it
passes overhead

Intrigued to read in the article, The science of sailing: inside the race across the world’s most remote ocean, by Yvonne Gordon, that:

The Southern Ocean is not somewhere most people choose to spend an hour, let alone a month.

Circling the icy continent of Antarctica, it is the planet’s wildest and most remote ocean.

Point Nemo – just to the north in the South Pacific – is the farthest location from land on Earth, 1,670 miles (2,688km) away from the closest shore.

The nearest humans are generally those in the International Space Station when it passes overhead.

I looked it up.

The international Space Station is about 250 miles away.

So you need a circle with a radius of 250 miles or a diameter of 500 miles or an area of around 196,350 square miles which is bigger than California but smaller than Texas and in the circle, there can be no other people.

If you are at the center of that space and the International Space Station flies over you head, those people on the Space Station are closer to you than anyone else on earth.

light exists in Spring
not present any other when
March is scarcely here

A Light exists in Spring by Emily Dickinson

A Light exists in Spring Not present on the Year At any other period — When March is scarcely here A Color stands abroad On Solitary Fields That Science cannot overtake But Human Nature feels. It waits upon the Lawn, It shows the furthest Tree Upon the furthest Slope you know It almost speaks to you. Then as Horizons step Or Noons report away Without the Formula of sound It passes and we stay — A quality of loss Affecting our Content As Trade had suddenly encroached Upon a Sacrament.

Jeremiah Johnson: Would you happen to know what month of the year it is?

“Bear Claw” Chris Lapp: No, l truly wouldn’t. l’m sorry, pilgrim.

Jeremiah Johnson: March. Maybe, April.

“Bear Claw” Chris Lapp: March maybe. l don’t believe April. Winter’s a long time going?
Stays long this high. March is a green, muddy month down below. Some folks like it.

From the 1972 movie Jeremiah Johnson.

How can that movie be 50 years old?

vegetable gardens
not big but there’s a science
to making gravy

In the book Sundog, Jim Harrison writes of an May Morning in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula;

A cold dawn with the wind shifting to the north in the night.

I tried to scrape frost from my windshield with my fingernails.

No wonder vegetable gardening isn’t a big item up here, while the making of gravy is a science.

I stole this image of a ski trail up there above the bridge, the Mackinaw Bridge I mean, was taken by my friend Katie who live up there and swears that she loves it.

For myself, I guess, all I need is the picture and that is as close as I want to get.

Mr. Harrison, and he was the UP’s biggest fan, said this:

Above the Straits of Mackinac, the Upper Peninsula sat alone, perhaps the least-known land mass in the United States.

In this age where every niche on earth has been discovered and rediscovered countless times, there is an open secret why the upper Midwest is generally ignored: it is relatively charmless, and it competes with Siberia for the least hospitable climate on earth.

On the other side of the river, the road entered an enormous swamp some thirty miles in width, with very few other cars on the road. For a while the lack of any traffic caused a vertigo as if I had been abandoned.

Apparently on a Thursday night in May in the Upper Peninsula no one goes anywhere, but then where would they go?

[Enter] the UP, as it’s called, [You] enter a timbered-over, rock-strewn waste, a land so dense and desolate it became obvious to me that the most redoubtable survivalist couldn’t survive.

On the other hand I live in resort town and it is the off season.

Apparently on a Monday night in January in the Low Country no one goes anywhere, but then where would they go?

The picture makes a nice contrast to my usual ocean side views.

The Google says where I am and where this this picture was taken are about 1200 miles and about 14 degrees of latitude apart distance wise.

But where it really counts, the google says it is 7 degrees Fahrenheit right now up north while it is 67 degrees down here.

No wonder vegetable gardening isn’t a big item up here, while the making of gravy is a science.