Flour Power

In times like these, I think it's best to stick it to The Man as much as possible. One of the ways we do this in our family is to make our own bread. Once every week or week and a half I bake three loaves of my mom's bread, which is seriously the most delicious whole wheat bread I have ever had. And periodically I even do something really brave, like make my own bagels. (That particular whim blossomed after I felt like eating bagels then noticed that a package of five bagels costs like $2.00. As if. I could totally make like 12 bagels for literally just pennies! Note: it's time consuming but yummy. And if you have a two-year-old she will be pretty torqued that you have to broil them then boil them then bake them before eating. Just give her a dang bagel already!)

At any rate, the whole bread making process starts out by running several pounds of wheat through my wheat grinder while Clara and Jonathan hide in Clara's room ("It's too loud for ME, Mommy!"). Then I (with the able help of my petite sous-chef) put everything in my Bosch mixer and let the machine do all the work. When the dough is kneaded, Clara nips little tastes while I push the dough into three pans to rise. (More than once our finished bread has had two little finger marks in it from a secret pinch during the rising time. Why does she like to eat dough??) When all is said and done, we are sitting down to thick slices of delicious bread in an hour and a half, start to finish.

Sometimes, though, I have more to contend with than a loaf pincher. If you have ever seen a Bosch during its kneading cycle, you'll know that it tends to rock and roll a bit while it does the good work of saving my biceps from 20 minutes of forced labor. And I learned that while said rocking and rolling is going on you should not leave an open container of freshly ground flour on the edge of the counter while your baby is playing on the floor. If you do, you might end up with a little bit of this:


And a little bit of that:


Oh well. My only consolation--aside from that happy (if goopy) face--was that at least I'd already made the dough! I guess this is what I get for looking at my bread making as sticking it to The Man rather than just feeding my family. Can't it be both?