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No BreadAugust 20, 2009 I was going to title this one "No Bread, No Fair," but though I like the double entendre, neither part of it is true so "No Bread" will have to do. Yesterday I was baking bread for the fair, which starts today. It was hot sultry humid hot. Despite the amount of rye flour (almost half the total) in it, and the fact that it was powered by sourdough (no one told my starters that sourdough rising is supposed to be leisurely), the dough rose much too fast. I put the bowl in a dishpan of cold water. It still rose pretty fast, so I punched it down and let it rise again. When I loafed it, I put the two loaf pans in the fridge. My fridge is 3/4 size and usually full, so making room took some ingenuity. This greatly slowed the rising, but it also meant it wasn't ready to bake when I had to go do barn chores. I removed loaf pans from fridge, set them on the counter (it was 5 o'clock by then, and a little cooler but not much), and went to the barn. When I got back, the dough hadn't risen all that much. It probably felt as soggy and listless as I did. I made up and baked some cranberry walnut quick bread -- it came out fine -- and finally baked the sourdough rye, hoping the oven heat would give it enough lift to round the tops a bit. It didn't. It tastes OK but it's heavy and it isn't especially appetizing to look at. I decided not to take it to the fair. I briefly considered thawing one of the two loaves in my freezer, a nice-looking sourdough raisin whole wheat, and entering that -- but no. Frozen and thawed isn't fair quality, and niggling at the back of my mind was the possibility, real but remote, that the judges would scrawl "faint taste of freezer" on the card. I also considered just entering the quick bread, but my quick breads haven't fared (sorry!) all that well in the past, and besides, to me yeast breads are the real deal and quick breads are "anyone can do it" stuff. So I gave one of the loaves to my neighbors, one will go with me to a cookout tonight, and the other will stay home. So -- no bread in the fair this year. Sunday, though, Travvy and I are going in the dog show, and we'll be participating in teacher Karen's Rally demonstration. It's supposed to be cooler by the end of the weekend, and Karen's got a place staked out in the shade near the ferris wheel. It feels a little weird not to be entering bread this year, but I was already feeling a little lackadaisical "pro forma" about the whole thing: I'm doing it because I always do it. Several baking categories got cut this year; there used to be two yeast bread categories, light and dark, and now there's only one. Mostly, though -- bread and sourdough have loomed so large in my life and writing this year that even a blue ribbon would seem insignificant. After four and a half years in an apartment with no oven, it was important for me to get my bread-baking groove back; I've done it, time to move on. The bread thing was getting predictable. Travvy, on the other hand, is anything but. Travvy at the fair? That's a challenge!
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