We were encouraged to read from original sources when I was in graduate school.  I remember reading some early child care expert, I believe it was John Watson in his Psychological Care of Infant & Child, who advocated “introducing gentle frustration to an infant between 3 and 6 months.”  I thought that had to be the absolute height of ludicrousness!  As if not being able to tell anybody “feed me I’m hungry” or “hey I’m soaked and smelly” is not lesson enough in frustration. 

Then I started wondering is it really adult to volunteer to take up a challenge like Paper Chef or the Daring Baker’s when we’re sure to come up with situations like I encountered yesterday in the normal course of everyday life?  Am I an adult with a thinking brain?  No, wait, I don’t think I really want to ask you that, I might not want your answer.

With no photos of the “panic” part of this experience, but here’s the story.

I very often turn to Dan Leader’s Local Breads and that is where I started this decent into chaos.  Bread Sticks with Olives, a biga the night before, an overnight in the fridge, a few minutes relaxing into kneading the next day, a few hours rising, twenty minutes baking: that sounds like just what I knead!

Biga

115g (1/2 cup) water

3/4 teaspoon instant yeast

150g (1 cup) unbleached bread flour

Mix together to form a thick pie dough like consistency.  Knead a minute or two to a sort of smooth dough.  Oil lightly and place in covered container. 

Leave out at room temperature an hour or so.

Refrigerate 8 hours minimum; upwards of 16 hours is better for flavor development.

Dough

Biga totaling 260 to 270g (1 1/2 cup)

375g (1 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons) water

1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

500g (3 1/4 cup) unbleached bread flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

200g (2 cups) green olives coarsely chopped

With my glasses on I reached for water, read 270g and measured out 170g.  I mixed.  I looked at the book.  Oops I’ve left out 100g water.  How stupid!  I somehow get that 100g into the dough . . . dry this is just too dry, no way is this making bread. 

Maybe I should just toss this and start over.  I’ve ruined the biga.  I don’t want to lose the gorgeous green olives I’ve spent major dollars on.

I look at the recipe again . . . 375g water!  What kind of fool . . . I mean I have my glasses on. . .  I think I’m measuring so carefully  . . . How am I going to add that much more liquid to this dry stiff dough?

Have you ever had to add water to a stiff dry dough?  A little water is easy.  The dough looks dry and feels  dry: I’ll flatten it out and spray it with my mister and then fold it up and give it a little knead.  How long would it take to mist out 100g of water? 

Add 100g more of water and I’m going to get slime with clumps of glop.

Oh let me tell you the words I’m using were as ugly as the dough . . . no, they were worse. 

Water, it’s just water I need here.  I stood facing this bowl of stiff dry dough surrounded by unincorporated flour turned to glop with water.  What did I do?  I turned my back on it and walked off. 

Coffee.  I’m going to sit down with some coffee.  I reach for some milk for my coffee and behind the milk are these three containers of starter I’m feeding on a revival schedule.  What do you know about that?  What is a starter but lots of water . . . the coffee can wait.

I give up on mixing this by hand to enjoy a relaxing knead and put it in the trusty power house Kitchen Aid.  I add starter aka know as toss off in some circles of bread making because ordinarily that’s what would happen to it: I would throw away half the old and feed it new water & flour.  I add starter in the amount of . . . ha, ha you think I’m measuring at this point!  I add starter toss off until that dough hook starts working like a dough hook and things come together to form a soft, smooth, silky, slightly tacky dough.  I know it’s soft, smooth, silky, slightly tacky because now I’ve put it on the counter and give it some luxuriously relaxing kneads . . .  ah people this is lovely.

I ball up my soft, smooth, silky, slightly tacky dough and cover it. 

I chop my gorgeous green olives.

The directions say to flatten the dough into a rectangle and spread the olive on top.  Roll the dough up jelly roll fashion and fold together and knead the olives until well distributed.  You know what happened don’t you?  It breaks and chunks and glops!!  Yes, of course it did!  All that lovely olive oil juice separated that soft, smooth, silky, slightly tacky dough and I had glop again.

Yes, the air was blue in my kitchen.

I added flour.  I kneaded. 

Pffff . . . . I got back to mostly soft, smooth, silky, slightly tacky dough.

It rose for 2 hours.

I shaped it into 26 sticks.  They rested covered for 20 minutes.

They baked at 450° for 22 minutes.

They came out of the oven.

And people . . . They are were GOOD!!

No, actually, these were really GREAT!!  This one I sprayed with a little olive oil and toasted under the broiler!!!

The neighbors are begging for more.

More!!!  Do you think I could do that again?  Could you follow what I did and make more? 

More!!!  Yes, I’d love more so I guess I’ll be trying to introduce some gentle frustration into my life, learn to deal with it and aim to replicate these because they are divine.

And that’s my Yeast Spotting for this week.  If you’re looking for some great bread or something to do with it, you’re very likely to find it at Susan’s weekly Yeast Spotting on her WildYeastblog.