Thursday, February 11, 2010

hate laundry? bake bread instead!

It's no secret around here, I tend to get most productive when avoiding another task. I suspect many can relate. Time to clean, I feel like painting; time to paint, I feel like cleaning, for example. Its just the way I operate. Turns out avoiding laundry has paid off for us all this time. Who knew? Go me.

As of late I have found a desire to get back to cooking and baking. Making and eating real food. I garden in the summer and love to eat food I have made, it just turns out that I needed a break from all the years of cooking and baking, something i have loved to do since I was a child. So I did. We ate junk for a while. No longer. The break is over. Also, it turns out that when you are at home like i have been for the last 4 weeks in between contracts, its probably a nice idea to cook a few more meals for a very hard working husband: the bub.

Enter Suzie. Suzie Ridler, aka Suzie the Foodie, has been my inspiration to get back into food. She lives on the east coast, a place I call home, with her loving husband and she l.o.v.e.s. - loves- to cook. She loves to cook so much that she makes ME want to be cook more. THAT'S how much. Suzie blogs about her adventures in cooking, takes on both basic and more advanced recipes, explains steps with detail, substitutes without fear, and documents both her successes and failures equally. She always provides beautifully shot photographs. She reeled me in. She even tried one recipe I found last year for Pear & Zucchini Soup and blogged about it after! Turns out she is also a frickin awesome person too! I encourage you to make your way over to meet her via her blog. You will not be disappointed and will definitely leave inspired to try something old or new.

So, baking bread. Suzie made bread one day. Suzie said anyone could do it. I was nervous. I am afraid of yeast, and the only bread I had made was in the early 90s in a breadmaker. It always turned out like a weird shaped rock. Suzie said I could do it by hand, from scratch, and I tend to like a challenge. So, I pulled out one of my old cookbooks, Pillsbury's Complete Book of Baking (1993), and got to reading all I could about yeast and bread and baking tips (aka rabbit hole). It was great. Even though Suzi had provided a bread recipe, I started out with the most obvious of recipes in my own cookbook I have been ogling over the years: Delicious White Bread. How could I argue, with a title like that? So, I followed the recipe step by step, and what do you know?

EASIER than laundry.

As a result/in an effort to avoid laundry, I have twice baked bread this month. I am as alarmed as anyone else. I made the same recipe again the second time, except instead I decided to make the second loaf Cinnamon Swirl. The great thing about this recipe is that it provides alternatives to plain while bread. I know.Turns out the smell it creates in the home alone erases all guilt in avoiding laundry and placates spouses too. Awesome. And the result? Awesome! I mean, its all * Tea, a drink with Jam (i made last summer) & Bread (i made myself)* for days to come over here. What's not to love about this?

Thanks Suzie!

leel

10 comments:

oldskoolkid said...

LOL! Awesome.. and that bread looks greaatttt. Me very jealous! Now, do the laundry!! *aka Operation Bake-More-BREAD* :D

Evangeline said...

Awesome post! That cinnamon swirl bread! *drools*

You've inspired me...bread is now on the agenda for tomorrow. :)

Suzie Ridler said...

YOU TOTALLY ROCK! Oh I so love this post and not just because I am so very flattered and honoured about what you said about me, which moved me deeply. But you made bread twice?! Oh that REALLY warms my heart. It means you secretly liked doing it if you did it twice and that cinnamon swirl? Fabulous! I haven't done that before. I love it so much that you are warming up to making food again. And who could say no to delicious white bread? I mean is there anything more tempting in the world?

P.S. I just gotta get the name of that cookbook you have! Is it "The Pillsbury Cookbook"? Or "Complete Book of Baking"? I have to have it! :)

leel said...

@thekid: thanks! i agree, more bread!

@E: thanks sista! the cinnamon swirl was so easy! glad to inspire you :)

leel said...

@Suzie: thank you so much for the encouragement and inspiration. i truly love following your blog!
And yup, I love baking bread now. I will continue doing so as long as we keep eating it and I enjoy doing it! The Cinnamon Swirl was SO easy to do! The link I found online for the recipe has all the alternatives as well, Cinnamon Swirl included! The book I have is the Complete Book of Baking (1993) and i love it. TONNES of info in each chapter with how-to instructions for anything you would want to know about baking. My big dream? A chocolate Souffle. I KNOW! one day :)

Thanks again Suzie! YOU ROCK!

Heather Plett said...

You're making me very hungry for fresh bread! There must be a theme goin' on here - first I post about my mom baking buns, and now THIS. Hmmm... I may have to try making bread one of these days too.

leel said...

@heather: thanks for the comment! my next thing is rolls and buns and yummy other things too. I will have to go check out your post; how did i miss that?!

trust me, if i can do it, you can do it. get maddie in on it. you can create a little baker right there too!

Unknown said...

i need to bake but then again, I'd have to clean up the aftermath. have i mentioned i'm a very lazy person?

leel said...

@gorillabuns: thanks for popping by!(i love your blog - shouldnt you be having sex right now?! ha!) ANYWAY - i so hear you, on the lazy thing. i must admit, there are traces of flour still haunting us, 2 days later. and i still have PILES of laundry. dammit...

Red Shoe Artist said...

Yaa-hahahha-um!

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