The Chronicles Of A Sporadic Bread Baker

Years and years ago, when our first child was still a baby, and I was a young housewife with time on my hands and limited TV channels to surf, I would bake bread. I did not make boring loafs of white bread for sandwiches. I made french bread and dinner rolls and soft pretzels.

And I remember thinking at the time that this bread making thing wasn't so hard.

Then we moved back to our hometown, I was pregnant with our second child, living in a 800 square foot rental house with the tiniest room being the kitchen. Even if I hadn't been exhausted, there wasn't counter space to really knead a ball of dough. And if I'm being very honest, the kitchen was always a little skeevy, no matter how much sanitizing I did, and I really didn't want to roll food around on the counter.

Bread making fell to the wayside as my time became consumed with two kids and being a part time single mom due to my husbands job and owning a home of our own and throw in two turtles as "easy" pets and I never missed not making bread.

Until recently. I was cleaning out my baking cupboard and am ashamed to say I found packages of yeast that had an expiration date from 5 years ago. I wondered why I had purchased it, then wondered why I had never used it, and that led to the next time I was at the store I tossed a new package of yeast into the cart.

I had vague plans to make french bread when I made homemade spaghetti sauce on a Sunday afternoon, but my spaghetti making plans kept getting off track and weeks passed by, until yesterday arrived and called out to me that it was the perfect day to make spaghetti. And french bread.

I have never had a ball of dough rise so beautifully, nor the loafs look so darling with the slits in their top crust and cornmeal dusting their bottom crust. And the taste.....OMG. Heavenly. Smeared with a pat of butter or scooping up a bit of sauce, the bread was so much better than anything I could have bought at the store.

I'm not saying I'm going to bake bread every weekend, but I am positive I won't let 14 years go by again without breaking open the yeast and baking up some to die for bread!