The Wrong Hobby For Someone With No Patience

I'm about a month or so into obsession with my newest hobby, bread making. This is a favorite of my many hobbies, mostly because I get to eat the results and because I have always had a place in my heart for bread. It wasn't until I started making my own, however, that that place in my heart started taking over and now there are stacks of books in every corner, left over bread crusts in every cabinet that I cant bear to throw away and dried dough permanently lodged under my finger nails. Bread is such a happy comforting thing.

My mama used to take my sisters and I to the library after school when we were young. We'd spend all afternoon pouring over the shelves and picking out only the best books to take home. Mama would load them all up in a sack she made designated for toting books back and forth to the library. After we had made our selections and piled back into the car, mama would stop by the grocery store for whatever few things that she needed for dinner and bag of cheese bread from the bakery. By the time we got home, all us girls would be sick from reading in the car and stuffed with cheese bread. Bread is such simple plain thing but I have more colorful memories than just that one wrapped around homemade challah, thanksgiving dinner rolls, baking cinnamon rolls and dense banana bread.

There is so much to learn and so much you cant learn from books when making bread. Half of what I need to know about kneading and baking has to learned by experience and gauged touch and feel. This isn't my preferred method of learning. I like a set of plain rules, steps and do's and dont's. If I didn't like to eat as much as I do I would've given up on this baking thing already. There haven't been any major disasters yet, almost every thing that has come out of my oven has been edible so that means I will probably continue baking, at least a few loaves a week, until my pants don't fit. Then I will know I am doing things right.