Get Thee to a Bakery!

     When I was in high school, I scored a spot in the only Honors English class period taught by a coach.  This isn't a generalization about coaches who are teachers, because some of them are super-awesome.  But I will say this: we spent six weeks in a "Satire Unit" where we mostly watched Simpsons and Family Guy parodies of classic literature.  You may or may not know this about me, but I wasn't allowed to watch the Simpsons or Family Guy, even in high school!  I also wasn't allowed to watch MTV.  But one time, when I was a freshman and "going out" with a guy, we watched an episode of the Simpsons over the phone.  It was back before texting, so it was much more romantic than kids these days. Sorry, dad.  

     Anyway, my take-away from English class was this: Get Thee to a Bakery! (instead of the line from Hamlet: "Get thee to a nunnery!"  No, I don't remember the plot, but I'm pretty sure everyone dies).

    All that to say, we have been baking around here.  I don't know how my gluten-free friends do it, because bread is taking over our lives.  A few weeks ago, Dave got a hankering for homemade pretzels and a wife with love handles.  He whipped out the Kitchenaid mixer and got to work.  We let Myla shape a pretzel of her own.  

 I guess she needed a little sample of the dough...Tasty!

This weekend, I made bread.  It's true, y'all.  I have never felt more Suzy Homemaker in my entire life.  I eat two pieces of peanut butter toast every morning, and Myla eats peanut butter&jelly sandwiches almost every day, so I decided to give this a go. I definitely had to gear myself up to start the process, because I have a slight fear of baking and a slight fear of using our mixer, and a real fear of getting it down off the top of the refrigerator.  That thing could crush a skull, so Dave helped a sister out.  I also prefer to do the bread things with him around because he used to work in a bakery in real life.  I followed this honey-wheat recipe except that I didn't buy special bread flour.  I would definitely recommend it! I froze two loaves and started using one for breakfast.

Immediately after I finished the bread, Dave decided to make biscuits on one of his baking whims.  The man is trying to sabotage my life.  Needless to say, I don't have a picture, because the two of us hovered over the skillet and ate half the biscuits in the pan for dinner.

All that baking made for an exhausting day, but we still made time for tummy time!