Last night I had the first opportunity to teach someone how to make bread. Let me explain - we have a kitchen worker here, named Jack. Eighteen years old, and just graduated high school, back in Eagan, Minnesota. He's a well-meaning kid, but a bit rambunctious, always really loud, and never stops talking. He's going to Moorhead State in Minnesota, to study psychology. I've had him on a few of my shifts before when I was his lead, and he'd always want to help, but never really quite knew what to do.
He told me one day that he'd never baked bread before. Not at home ever, nor here, because he'd never been assigned to bread. He told me that he wanted me to teach him how to bake bread.
I'm always up for a good bread baking session. Always. We planned to meet last night after Vespers back in the kitchen. He wanted to make "Chocolate Chip Bread", which I thought a bit odd, but I thought to humor him, I'd go with it.
We met back at the kitchen after Holden Evening Prayer (Saturday Vespers), and I thought I could convince him otherwise - I thought it would be good to do the standard Holden loaf, because that loaf recipe is the very basics for any other bread you could ever want to bake. However, Jack was adamant. He wanted chocolate chips in his bread.
So, I told him to go get yeast and milk. He came back with half & half, which I threw in to the mixer along with a cup of water. He couldn't find the yeast, so after another few minutes of explaining where it was, I sent him back into the walk-in (our big kitchen refrigerator). Finally finding the "Yeasty-Beasties" as they're called here, he came back to the bakery area.
He proceeded to ask questions as I was explaining the process of bread baking, yeast and it's relationship to water, sugar, etc, such as, "So yeasts are tiny animals?", "Do I get the chocolate chips now?", and on and on. Like I said, Jack never stops talking.
I told him to go get the flour. Holden uses half white, half wheat in their loaves, which creates for a nice airiness in each slice. He got the flour, came back, threw it in the mixer, and soon we had a nice dough forming. I asked him, "Okay, do you still want to add chocolate chips?" I tried to deter him, because I thought chocolate chips would be a really odd, and not necessarily pleasant, addition to a white/wheat loaf, but Jack again was persistent. Jack went, got the chocolate chips, and rushed back, pouring them into the dough. It was a sad moment for me!
The dough was then covered for an hour, where we then came back, punched it down, kneaded it, and formed it into two loaves. We let it rise a little bit more while I explained the process of rising and shaping and forming. Soon, (because it was late and I had been up since 5:00 am!) the dough was in the oven. It came out a nice golden brown half an hour later, and then Jack proudly grabbed and cutting board, and, surrounded by a crowd of friends and family, cut his first slice of bread he made all by himself.
Jack is another person that I'm glad I got to know during my time here - a good kid with a good heart who finally knows how to make bread, haha! :)
In other news, today is my Saturday! I went to breakfast early this morning and tried the pumpkin bread that I slaved over all day yesterday. Pretty good! :) It's raining here, so it'll be a good reading day.
Hope this finds all my readers well!
From the Village -
Dean
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