On Friday I decided to give this whole "5 minute" bread deal a try. I mean, if it's only a few ingredients and it takes five minutes, it has to be "Lisa proof" right? Off I went to Planet Organic to score some yummy flour (organic whole wheat- my solid lioli produce-grain bag worked great!) and take about 20 minutes to find the yeast. After scanning the recipe- flour, salt, yeast, water- I halved the flour and dumped in the water... and realized I was supposed to mix the salt, yeast and water FIRST. Sigh. In a tiny cup I mixed all three and added it to the flour+water batch and hoped for the best.Wow, super easy! Now for the baking..... err, letting it rise for two hours. Oh. Two whole hours. I want bread right now! In any case, two hours later and the lump in the middle of the bowl still looked an awful lot like a lump. Wasn't bread supposed to rise? Shape it into a "boule" (a nice French way to say ball-shaped) and didn't have any oatmeal so I sprinkled some of Andrew's banana granola on top. Let set for twenty more minutes on the pan. Lots of waiting involved.
During the waiting to actually bake the bread, I decided to make home made apple sauce. I found a website that said it's as easy as cutting up the apples, dunking them in water with some cinnamon and mushing it up! I can totally do that. Cut up a bag of local organic macintosh's and went to add some water. How much water? It didn't say. I looked up another recipe (that also had all this extra stuff like a cup of sugar and a lemon peel) that said a cup of water for four pounds of apples. How many pounds of apples did I have? I am saddened to admit that I added WAY too much water to the apples before realizing that perhaps I should drain 90% down the sink. Thankfully the applesauce actually turned out to be YUMMY. Four cinnamon sticks, some clove powder, ginger and one tablespoon of fair trade organic dark dark brown sugar and tah dah! Applesauce! It tasted delicious and was the easiest thing to make. Who knew?
At this point the bread had been baking and smelled slightly burnt. I guess the granola idea wasn't my best... Neither was using 100% whole wheat flour. I have a funny feeling that pre-mixing the yeast, salt and water then slowly adding the flour is somewhat essential. Andrew and I bravely cut up four pieces and with some melted garlic butter ate them resolutely while watching Top Chef. It was a bit disgusting. I'm considering using the leftover dough to make some pizza crusts through the week. Perhaps next weekend we'll try this bread thing again... with Andrew there to supervise lol.
Happy weekend! I'll leave you with pictures of H. and K. doing AcroYoga in the park on Saturday. Our guerrilla yoga was kindly led by a local Anusara teacher, Leanne, who also teaches AcroYoga. She was able to flip my around from 'folded leaf' (picture here) to 'walnut' where I placed my feet into baddha konasana (bound angle), reached between her legs and clasped my ankles. She then asked me if I trusted her, I closed my eyes and she twirled me around on her feet! I'm not the greatest base but AcroYoga was playful and fun! Leanne definitely made that more possible with her open, matter of fact and non-creepy demeanor (this is another posture that we did Saturday!).Blessings! Check in tomorrow for some more Personal Practice Adventure info- How to create a home sequence :)
article and photos copyright of EcoYogini at ecoyogini.blogspot.com
*giggle* My attempt at homemade bread produced a tasty, yet brick-like concoction....again, the order of ingredients is clearly important..that and the health of the yeast (seems mine was dead?)
ReplyDeleteThat's you doing AcroYoga?!? I thought it was a scene from a Cirque de Soleil performance.....*cheeky grin*
haha- thank goodness i am not alone with the brick bread!
ReplyDeleteactually, those are my friends H. and K., but Leanne standing off to the side was the base and she lifted me up that way earlier... than I reached through, grabbed my ankles and she spun me up and around with her FEET LOL. Andrew didn't know at that time I had the camera ... so no pictures of me... :)
H. and K. were most definitely pumped!
Don't worry about the bread! When I first tried to bake bread at high altitude (about a mile up), I used special high-altitude flour AND instructions, and still ended up with a massive hockey puck of a loaf. It was seriously about an inch thick and weighed a TON. Baking at sea level is much easier! Is your bread salvageable for croutons? Or, if all else fails, feeding birds?! :)
ReplyDeleteI would love to try AcroYoga. It looks like so much fun!
I can bake cakes that masquerade as biscuits. Does that count as baking?
ReplyDeleteWow, your acroyoga looks so much fun! I am jealous. I think bread is an art. I have also created a loaf which could mascarade as a brick.
ReplyDeleteI want to try again, but it seems like such an effort if it goes wrong! Not the attiude I should have I know.
Jen
Breadcrumbs are also a handy solution for those Flour Product Disasters. (And for all my happy bread posts, there are a lot of bread crumbs in my freezer!) Good for meatloaf or meatballs (or meatless alternatives thereof) and stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteSo what I want to know is...where does one get the recipe for the faux blueberry cheesecake? :-)
Vegan Burnout: hmm I didn't think of breadcrumbs. Sadly the 'rock' has already been composted- BUT i still have to bake the rest, and homemade bread crumbs and croutons are a fantastic idea!
ReplyDeleteRose: most certainly does in my book!
Jen(darkpurplemoon): AcroYoga is fun, but it's not really my thing with my trust and personal boundary issues. H. & K. had a blast though and are considering a four week program! :)
Jennifer: phew! so I have hope :) The 'faux blueberry cheesecake' is actually a non-bake 'cheesecake', so it still has cream cheese (light) and blueberries but it's not a real 'cheesecake'. I guess that was a little misleading too, as it does still have dairy :S It IS delicious though, so if you'd like the recipe, please let me know and I'll post it this week! :)