Making Bread
From ‘The Adventures of The McGaffin’s As We Remember Them’ — a family memoir begun July 17, 2003.
Making bread. Having lived in New Jersey, I was raised on both Jewish and Italian breads. There were hard rolls, rye, wheat, and many different variations of each. I really enjoyed bread that required work to eat. Going into the Navy, I went into a soft white bread world with one exception. When I was on board the ARL 13, a new cook who had been in training to be a chef, came on board. He wanted to continue his recently learned skills. He was able to convince the First Class cook to allow him to do some baking. Well, he did a great job. We had different breads, rolls, and many different pastries. It was great; however, the other cooks became jealous over all the praise that he was receiving. Suddenly it was over and he was relegated back to the dull basic navy cooking.
After we got out of the Navy and moved around through New York and Baltimore and returned to Janesville, I was able to get Grandma to bake some homemade bread. I really enjoyed it for a short time until she decided that it was too much trouble. Well, after the withdrawal pains I decided that the only way to get good bread was to make it myself. So, now 40 (as of this revision it is about 60 years and still going). It has been a challenge that I have enjoyed. I started with a white bread recipe from the Betty Crocker Cook Book. Over time I made different modifications. For many years I baked almost every Saturday. I would do the preparation and the mixing and Mom would watch the rising and baking. When the twist loaf came out of the oven we would ring the bell and kids from all over would come to tear off pieces of bread and smother it with butter. The tradition continues today even though it is usually only Mom and I that enjoy the hot bread.
One night we had Osamu (Sam) Yoshida, an IBM friend from Japan, at the house for dinner. I had baked bread that day and we had some with dinner. Sam really enjoyed the bread. He was going back to Japan the next day. I asked him if he would like to take a few loaves back with him. He said yes and this started a trend that made me an "International Baker". After that he would let me know that he was coming and the type of bread that he would like to take back with him.
Making bread is interesting because no batch reacts the same way. I remember one time that I was going to teach Karen to make bread, so we got all of the ingredients together and started. We were going to make a full 10 loaf batch. This was quite a challenge for Karen to handle a dough ball that large. We got it all together and put it in the oven to rise and then we waited and waited and waited. Apparently we had bad yeast or we killed it in the process, and we finally had to give it up. A big lump of dough went into the trash. I don't remember if Karen and I ever tried again.
This is the basic recipe that I have used for years. I have included it in case someone in the family wants to carry on the tradition. INSERT THE RECIPE
