Experimenting in the Kitchen

I like to cook, and experimenting is a big thing for me. In cooking, you can experiment without a high risk of failure once you learn some basic rules. And, yes, I have had some spectacular failures. Those were a long time ago. Nowadays, they are minor flops when things go wrong. There are a lot of life lessons in the kitchen.

I recently started to bake more. I remember back when I was in Korea that I made a pretty good coffee cake. It had easy to follow directions, and I was able to make adjustments with available resources. (For those of you not familiar with coffee cake, it is cake you can have with coffee. It is a simple cake, usually with some type of crumble topping.) Lately, I have taken up baking with natural yeast. Some call it sourdough, though it isn’t necessarily sour. That is one of the nuances that you learn as you go along. Taking care of your live ingredients matters.

Testing

My first batch that I made on my own was a winner. The kids liked it, and so did I. My last batch however was not quite so successful. I used mostly freshly ground wheat flour. It was also pretty cold that week. I had planned to let it rise overnight and bake it the next morning. Unfortunately, it was too cold and I had to let it continue to rise. It never quite doubled in 30+ hours, and I was busy when I was close. I knew that things were not going well.

I ended up waiting another day and a half before I finally decided to knead it and make my loaves. Considering the length of time it sat rising, I thought that it was going to be a disaster. (Well, it was for the gifts I had intended to make of the loaves, but that’s a different story.) I worked at making loaves with the sticky mess I had created and put the loaves in the 100° oven to rise.

Mindset is Vital to Success

I knew there was something going on my side in this experiment. I have a really good natural yeast start. It came from Czechoslovakia in 1912. It is a quality start. Mild in flavor when fed well, I have had some awesome results from it that my wife has produced. When I put it in the oven, I said to myself, “It can rise. I know it still can, even if it seems like a mess.” I had faith in the rising agent.

It took a little more time than normal, but it did rise. Since it was using whole wheat flour, I also knew that it would probably not rise as well as using bread flour. I baked it, and it looked pretty good, though I left it in a little too long. The flavor was a different story. Because it sat for so long proofing, it had turned quite sour. It was also a little heavier than I like, but with some butter, it wasn’t bad. It was the first time I had made bread with freshly ground wheat flour. I see it as a success. The loaves weren’t bricks, and it was edible.

I even found a good use for most of it. We make a breakfast casserole for Christmas breakfast, and it worked great in the casserole. The other nice thing about natural yeast bread is that it doesn’t easily go moldy. The yeast fights off production of molds. It does continue to go sour, but it lasts. We are making another casserole this weekend with the same batch of bread.

Learning From Our Mistakes

Too often we see mistakes and less than desirable results and call it a failure. You did not get this far in life because of your failures or those of your ancestors. There have been plenty of mistakes along the way, but I choose to see them as mistakes, not failures. If I choose to learn from the mistakes, I can make adjustments.

I wish I could go back and talk to some of my ancestors from Stolzhagen, East Prussia. The Penquitts were millers, and I am sure they could have given me some pointers on making quality breads. What we don’t value tends to be lost. Knowledge is much like the things we pile up in forgotten corners of our homes, garages, and sheds. By the time we find them again, we often don’t know what to do with it. Sometimes, when we take the time to polish it off, we can find great joy in it.

I look back to my family for those forgotten and neglected nuggets of knowledge that will bring me greater joy and success. That is why I help others to find their family. I love seeing others remember what has been forgotten. Ponder on what you want to learn, and look to your family to teach you as you keep experimenting. It is a joy that I cannot fully express.