Crusty Bread

Well, it has just been a few weeks and I know I am going to like retirement.  I’ve given myself permission to move into whatever I am going to be doing slowly.  My biggest indulgence these early days has been to sleep as long and as late as I want.  When I was working my three, very spoiled, cats would wake me rather rudely between 3:00 and 4:00 AM demanding their breakfast.  That I would get up and feed them did nothing but reinforce this very bad behavior.  

Somehow they have caught onto retirement very quickly.  Now, none of them bother me before 7:00 AM and even then, can be put off for another hour with a “shush, go back to sleep”. 

Sleeping in or going back to bed with a cup of coffee and a good book is such a luxurious indulgence.  It is one that I will relish in the upcoming dark, cold winter mornings.   

After their breakfast these three critters snuggle up with me in bed and I, being more than a bit goofy, read my book aloud to them.  I do not in any way believe they understand the content, but I do know they like hearing my voice.  So, they are indulged and my oral reading skills are kept fine-tuned.

Years back there were many small, local, ethnic bakeries where really good bread was made from scratch daily.  We lived near one in Yonkers: Weber’s Bakery.  They made the best breads.  The rye bread was very European, heavy, lots of caraway seeds and a hard, crunchy crust.  Similarly, their Italian bread was soft and light on the inside and had a golden crisp crust on the outside.  

It was a weekly ritual to be sent to Weber’s late Sunday mornings for Sunday dinner bread.  Most trips I went with one or both of my older brothers.  We all clamored to do this errand.  Not because we were such good kids, but because we had built a treat into it.

The bread would be packaged in a paper sack with one end protruding.  Whoever got to carry the bread home (we had some way of determining whose turn it was) got the treat of being able to niggle off all the crust on the end sticking out.  When all the crust was gone, the bread would be flipped around so that a perfect end was showing.  

When we would get home our Mom, always the good sport, played along with this, would remove the bread from the sack and ask what could have happened to the other end.  With absolute purity and angelic innocence we would off the possibility that maybe the mice in the bakery ate the crust.  With total sincerity, our Mom would solemnly nod and agree and then put the bread on the table for dinner.

That crunchy, yummy crust has always been a favorite in my family.  Even to this day, when it is just my brother M and me, we are always polite to offer the “heel” to the other, but I am always silently praying that he’ll decline, so I can selfishly enjoy it!

I watched the Great British Baking show last season and this and it has inspired me to develop some baking skills of my own.  I am taking an adult-ed Introduction To Baking class at Essex Tech and look forward to learning how to make pastry, cakes, and bread 

We are a small class, 6 adults (4 female, 2 male) with a nice span of ages.  The instructor Chef and his assisting staff and/or HS students are fabulous.  The class goes for 3 hours on Monday nights and is a real high point of my week.  Almost all of our time is spent in the lab, first observing a demo of what we are learning, and then doing it. 

I love the hands on and we get to take home what we bake! So far we’ve made, from scratch, pizza and cinnamon rolls the first week and last week an apple pie.  We took our extra pie crust dough home and unsupervised I made another apple pie.  It looked great and tasted pretty good too!

This next class I think we will focus on Artisan breads.   I am really looking forward to know how to make good bread with a great crust.  Yum!  Problem is, once I’ve made, then I’ll want to eat it!