Today’s adventure is bread. Above is a giant rising dough ball for two loaves of whole wheat sandwich bread, based on Deborah Madison’s recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, my bible, pretty much. The other loaf (yeah, I am making three loaves of bread today) is a part whole wheat boule utilizing the giant bunch of dill we got from the CSA last night. Dilled wheat bread, based on a recipe in Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, my other bible.

I say “based on” because I have this nagging problem of NEVER being able to follow a recipe properly. On purpose. I don’t know if it’s some weird, vestigal teen rebellion thing, but I cannot abide by perfect meaurements and exact instructions. I’d avoided baking for a long time for precisely this reason, but as soon as I began making yeasted breads a few weeks ago, I discovered that the rules about yeast and fat and flour weren’t as hard and fast as I’d previously imagined. Nothing came out bad, though nothing was as good as the no-knead recipe Dan’s baked a few times. I don’t know if I’m ready for that.

One mistake I did make was to leave the two oiled bowls, dough inside, on the floor near the heating vent. This was the warmest place in the kitchen, but it was also within reach of Bix’s snout. The lovely dough you see above now has an eight-month-old puppy bite taken out of it.