Pan de Vida? Have you had it? Do you know where I can get some? Because my bread-baking skills need something of an attitude adjustment.
Today, was a normal-ish day. I had a phone interview for this Creamery. It's a funny thing about that creamery--the wife of the man whose family has passed down the ownership of the farm for over 100 years, this woman, she happens to have the same name as I do. With the same spelling and everything. How would that be, to go to work: "Hello Clare," Clare replied to Clare's early morning greeting, shared while milking twin cows or stirring the same pot of curds. Just another day.
I guess I should have preceded my anecdote with another one about my morning. I had a bright idea to make bread today. We ran out of the store-bought seedy multigrain bread that I like and I wasn't at all excited about more plain store-bought wheat bread with no seeds or nothin'! So I found a recipe, took out our R2D2 lookalike bread maker, and hit the grocery stores with my open wallet and reusable bag, although in hindsight two bags would have really hit the mark. I bought three kinds of flour, sunflower seeds, celery for great soup my sister made for dinner (I will only buy celery if it was someone else's idea!) and after my 12 pack of seltzer leaking all over me in the parking lot, after which I got my money back and a free 12-pack, I hankered home to start my bread-making bravado. It was great until I spilled yeast everywhere and had to start over. Then, after my phone call, in a bit of foolishness, I forgot to put in the rubber stopper. As far as I knew, everything was getting stuck in the bottom of the mixer, and not going into my bread! Lo and behold, I appropriately then forgot to jerry-rig the counter (necessary because the bread maker gets a little carried away while it's kneading) and well, it fell on the floor and made a huge noise. My bread dough popped out and now the bread machine does not fit happily together anymore. However, I finally had an opportunity to put the stopper back in!
So, since I broke the machine, I had to do it myself. Who would have ever seen that coming?
I must say, although the top is a little concave (weighed down by sunflower seeds which do not adhere easily, as thought) the bread is good.
In honor of my noble experience today, tomorrow I plan on making Dark Rye bread, from scratch.
