A Simple Yeast Bread

Yeast breads have always intimidated me, with their fickle tendency to rise too much or not enough, or to die straight away and sabotage my meager efforts at making bread. Tricky little yeast, flaunting its living power to create or destroy, bullying novice bakers, making irrefutable demands about its living conditions. Just a simple wheat bread, that's all I want!

Well, that might be a bit dramatic, a slight exaggeration of my reluctance to learn just how to get along with that wondrous fungus, baker's yeast. Reluctance is the wrong word. Fear would be more appropriate. And that fear has kept me from working with any kind of dough other than quick until now. Today, I broke out the yeast, mixed it with warm water to awaken it, fed it some sugar, then mixed it with a healthy amount of flour and a little salt and oil for the eating's sake. I let the yeast do the work for me today, for the first time, though undoubtedly not the last.

I haven't tasted the bread yet. It's cooling on wire racks as I write this small memory. I don't know if it will be delicious and tender and chewy in all the right ways. I don't know if this experiment will lead to an adequate wheat bread, but it certainly looks promising: classic loaf shape, attractive little slits along the top, a smattering of poppy seeds for visual and gustatory interest. My first bread certainly has all the right components to be that simple little yeast bread I'm after. Now it's just a matter of waiting that painful hour while it cools on the rack.

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All is right in the world. That fresh bakery smell came out of my oven today: yeasty, delicious, homey. And the bread today lived up to its smell. I got my simple wheat bread, and I am pleased. I may have also acquired a new habit. This dough business is pretty gratifying, and, while I am still wary of yeast, I feel less bullied now, more able to meet its demands, ready for our next encounter.

I think Ed Brown, author of The Tassajara Bread Book, said it best: “If you have never made bread, your first batch is going to be better than nothing. After that, no comparison! Each batch is unique and full of your sincere effort. Offer it forth.”

And so, to the moon, with fresh bread in tow!

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A note: "Today" was actually a bit over a week ago. It just takes me a minute to write and post, slacker that I am. Since then, I've made a second batch of bread, rye-oat bread, that turned out just as well. Making bread really is a habit-forming occupation. I recommend it.