I just finished reading this article over at The Kitchn:
I can definitely think of many mismeasured, half doubled, forgotten burnt, substitution errors, missing ingredients, and faulty equipment errors in all my years of cooking. But something I can't figure out is my homemade bread.
As long as I've been married I've been baking bread. When we lived over seas and I had to content with foreign ingredients, measurements and equipment in a rented apartment, I found a recipe that worked and stuck to it. Bubbie Irma's challah recipe came out wonderful every time. Occasionally I'd by from the delicious, cheap bakery in the local market, but more often I'd bake.
We had three and a half years of wedded, doughy bliss. Then we moved back to America. We lived with my parents while hubsters did the job hunt and I got to make use of my mother's superior kitchen and American grocery stores to show off my culinary prowess. Except not. Each batch was a flop. Didn't rise, didn't taste good, didn't cook through, or burnt. I gave up and switched back to store bought, blaming the water, the inferiority of American ingredients, whatever. Rhodes Dough was cheap, tasty, and easy, It tasted good even if it didn't rise.
I tried again when we moved to the East coast with similar results. Back to the Rhodes frozen Dough. Then we learned about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and made a point to cut it out wherever we could. I spoke about both the ease of Rhodes dough and our healthy diet to anyone with a modicum of interest until one day a friend sheepishly told me that Rhodes dough had HFCS in it! I was flabbergasted, why the heck would frozen dough need it?? I went cold turkey, leaving the last few frozen loaves to languish in prime freezer real estate and went back to baking.
And the loaves were good.
What had changed? Only my determination to bake from scratch! Here we are two years after surrendering to fresh bread-less America, I have triumphed! I've even branched out to a new favorite recipe, the Oatmeal bread from the cookbook More with Less. It's delicious and I've even been brave enough to tinker with it successfully, increasing the ratio of white to whole wheat.
Why does a recipe flop? Sometimes for the same reason a recipe works, regardless of our best (or worst) efforts!
I just finished reading this article over at The Kitchn:
I can definitely think of many mismeasured, half doubled, forgotten burnt, substitution errors, missing ingredients, and faulty equipment errors in all my years of cooking. But something I can't figure out is my homemade bread.
As long as I've been married I've been baking bread. When we lived over seas and I had to content with foreign ingredients, measurements and equipment in a rented apartment, I found a recipe that worked and stuck to it. Bubbie Irma's challah recipe came out wonderful every time. Occasionally I'd by from the delicious, cheap bakery in the local market, but more often I'd bake.
We had three and a half years of wedded, doughy bliss. Then we moved back to America. We lived with my parents while hubsters did the job hunt and I got to make use of my mother's superior kitchen and American grocery stores to show off my culinary prowess. Except not. Each batch was a flop. Didn't rise, didn't taste good, didn't cook through, or burnt. I gave up and switched back to store bought, blaming the water, the inferiority of American ingredients, whatever. Rhodes Dough was cheap, tasty, and easy, It tasted good even if it didn't rise.
I tried again when we moved to the East coast with similar results. Back to the Rhodes frozen Dough. Then we learned about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and made a point to cut it out wherever we could. I spoke about both the ease of Rhodes dough and our healthy diet to anyone with a modicum of interest until one day a friend sheepishly told me that Rhodes dough had HFCS in it! I was flabbergasted, why the heck would frozen dough need it?? I went cold turkey, leaving the last few frozen loaves to languish in prime freezer real estate and went back to baking.
And the loaves were good.
What had changed? Only my determination to bake from scratch! Here we are two years after surrendering to fresh bread-less America, I have triumphed! I've even branched out to a new favorite recipe, the Oatmeal bread from the cookbook More with Less. It's delicious and I've even been brave enough to tinker with it successfully, increasing the ratio of white to whole wheat.
Why does a recipe flop? Sometimes for the same reason a recipe works, regardless of our best (or worst) efforts!
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