"I made bread"

I already had planned on doing this, but then I saw this bit making the rounds:

In among all the bawdy graffiti (and there was a LOT), there's that one little humble observation: "On April 19, I made bread."


A 2000 year ago blogpost, I guess.

Anyway, I had thought of making bread, and when I saw that, there was something....nice....about the idea. Reaching back across the years. Maybe feeling a tiny bit of connection at a time when I admit I feel VERY disconnected from everyone and everything.

I pulled out a couple of my Farm Journal cookbooks and found in the old Bread book (it's been reprinted, and a lot of the recipes changed; the one I use now is a vintage 1960s version). It's called Rich White Bread and it has 2 eggs in it along with the usual bread ingredients for "typical American farmhouse bread" (flour, yeast, water, milk, a little sugar, a little fat).

When I was looking for canned milk - I am running low but ordered more in case I keep on making bread - I found a jar of yeast I bought over 2 years ago and never opened. The sell by date was early last year and they sternly warned not to use it "more than 6 months after the sell by date" but I looked askance at that and figured it was really no effort to open it and proof a bit of it.



Yeah, it's alive.


So I mixed up the bread - it's about 6 cups of flour, so 2 loaves, I made one loaf and a pan of cinnamon rolls because I wanted cinnamon rolls.



It takes some work to knead bread for the recommended 10 minutes. I think this is why my mom's upper body has remained fairly buff (and it's probably good for her, maybe this sort of thing is why she's comparatively healthy for someone her age). She makes all the bread she uses, always have.

And I often use my oven, set on the lowest possible temperature, as a proof box to help the bread rise



This also got a short (1/2 hour) second rise (the first rise was an hour and a half - rich breads need more time) and then a final rise in the pans before baking.

Well.

I made bread today, but it kind of failed: the top separated and one end the crust seems dry and hard



I admit though I am in one of those moods where I am more or less dissatisfied with anything I can do. I got another e-mail from a student, this time claiming they could not access the lectures I had posted and "what was the access code" and I didn't set them with an access code and I can access them and I don't even know and this is what I loathe so much about the online teaching, stuff just randomly fails and I am not SMART enough to fix it or keep it from failing and I can't see how it failed and also it's three weeks into this experiment and he's telling me NOW he can't access the lectures?

Argh.

The rolls turned out maybe a little better:



I suspect part of the problem is I don't bake bread often enough to get good at it. I like being good at things. I don't like feeling like I've failed at things.

****

Periodically on BBC lately they've been reading a poem (I mostly listen to 4, which seems to be the most "highbrow" of the channels, though they do have some rather silly comedies on there - I admit to liking "Thanks a Lot, Milton Jones," which has some very tortured puns in it but at least does not seem to be mean-spirited humor).

I was not familiar with it and thought maybe it was purpose-written for the whole coronavirus thing and I admit I roll my eyes a bit over the bits of it that feel a bit more "greeting card poem" but then I learned it was Whittier......and well, I rather like the bits of Whittier I know, so.....maybe it's not so bad:

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is strange with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns
And many a failure comes about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow—
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell just how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit—
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.


But yes. I am tired of all the failure and the trudging up hills and it feels like it's always going to be thus from here on out, and it's hard, I admit, some days, to keep on going. It's hard not to feel utterly useless - I am obviously not an 'essential employee,' as I can do my job from home, and frankly, in our current situation, it would matter not at all if my job went away. Which is a bad and fearful feeling to have. And yes, one thing I must work on when I talk to the counselor is to learn how to find meaning and to value myself apart from what I can do in my job. Because if that goes away and I don't have some other self-support feeling in place....well, I fear what I might do. I don't know why I have such a hard time accepting I have intrinsic value but....well, there you are.


But:

April 19: I made bread today.


even if it wasn't perfect.


Added: Once the rolls cooled, I wrapped up and froze half of them, frosted the other half, had one for dessert: