40 Loaves for 40 Days

I've been to the Dark Side and camped there for about 4 months. At first, I thought it was my S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Then, there was a week of sunshine and nothing really changed for me emotionally. Nothing changed?! Oh my. I must've been worse off than I had originally thought. My sweet husband said he had never seen me so "bad off". So, in January, I started peeling back another layer of my emotional onion (BTW, onions always make me cry). By the time February rolled around, I was in the darkest place ever. I had remembered a phrase, "Depression is masked anger". Hmmm... my onion was rotting. So, through a series of events and questions that month, I had an epiphany. I found what I was angry about. I will not write about that right now.

I was telling a friend about this new revelation of mine and had at some point mentioned how my 10 year old bread machine had just went kaput on me. It really made me....mad....no....angry. Silly, I know. But at the time, I felt my anger was justified. So, she mentioned how her mother would make bread by hand and would put all her tension and anger into the kneading of bread. I laughed and made a quip about me making bread every day for 40 days. I'll have ripped biceps in time for Summer.

The idea stayed with me for a couple of weeks. I have decided to take this journey. I am now in anger management therapy. Bread making will be the assignment. I'm not sure I'll make a loaf every day, but I do plan on completing this self-assigned assignment before Summer. So, I pulled out my Southern Living Cookbook and looked up "Basic White Bread".

Day One: "Experimental Bread"

It took me 4 stinkin' hours to make this bread. I was so frustrated! My loaf pan was too small, so I had to make the braided bread version. And just so everyone knows, our house is at a cool 58 degrees. It's old and drafty and is heated by $3.00/Gal Oil and it takes 150 gallons/ month to keep it at a cozy (Not) 62 degrees. So, we just use some space heaters and bundle up. There, I just exposed another reason for my anger. Please, don't comment on that. Anyway, I placed the loaf in the pre-heated200 degree oven with a pot of really hot water and wished I could crawl in there with it. It took two and half hours for it to do it's rising and kneading and rising again cycle. And let me tell you, I kneaded that loaf for 12 minutes and my triceps were sore the next day. I put alot of "umph" into it. Now, the recipe calls for brushing egg white on the top of it and that requires taking it out of the warm cocoon of an oven. Gasp! Let me tell you what risen bread does when it makes a -142 degree temperature change. It FALLS! This was what I have learned pre-day One from some other disastrous cooking day (hence the bread machine began being used). But, my braided beauty...would not have such fate. I took it to a small room in the house where I had the space heater cranked up to 81 degrees for 5 hours, the door closed and people were banned from this room until the braided beauty was finally baking in the oven! I brushed egg white on the top. I kept a pan of hot water under the bread pan to help maintain the warmth. I put it back in the oven. So far, so good. It was beautiful. It baked, it browned, it was aromatic. I took a picture of it. We ate it. It was delicious. I wasn't sure I'd make another loaf until we finished the loaf the next morning (toasted with butter). Yeah. I could do it again.