Never send another person to buy flour. Instead of cornmeal, which one visualizes in a Platonic way as yellow or golden, this wonderful non-baker shopper (whom I love and adore) sees "cornmeal" on the package and purchases blue cornmeal. Since I passed on the ditzy, perhaps inattentive, genes to this person, it is not proper for me to complain. And why not use blue cornmeal? People make blue or bright green candied apples after all, though that unnatural coating seems likes a poor analogy for an attempt to branch out to new grains in my bread making. Somehow the direction to purchase a small package of whole wheat flour for the upcoming whole wheat and buckwheat bread got translated, shall we say misinterpreted, into a large package of generic, store brand flour that I have doubts about. Again, why not try it once? Just because I have grown dissatisfied with the whole grain flours of a different large flour producer does not necessarily mean anything.
Had my mother sent me at the same adult age to the supermarket with a similar list I most likely would not have done better. The goal at that age is to be thanked, which happened before I looked at the purchases, reimbursed (check), but not appreciated sufficiently to be asked to regularly perform the task. Check on that as well. It's the Car Talk theory of domestic task avoidance: Do the task willingly, though not well. In this person's case discussed here, no such Machiavellian calculation occurred; just the airheadedness (probably not actually a word, let alone an adjective) that I myself passed on.
Next up
On my agenda are a cornmeal and white flour bread from Hammelman's Bread and that whole wheat and buckwheat from Breadtime. After a month of remaking the same two breads - numbers 57 and 58 - and rushing around so much that I resorted to old favorites I have practically memorized, I am finally moving forward with my resolution to branch out beyond wheat, spelt and rye sourdoughs, though those were all new not too long ago. Celebrate those small triumphs.
I wish my mom were here. She would be so proud of my humble blog, of my writing and bread making. She'd ask to sample everything and she would wholeheartedly and frankly offer her opinions. She would tell me "this will lead to something" as she did with my local - and this is a hyperbolic word to use - activism, which she ended up being correct about, though she passed away about six months before that happened. I still think she gave G-d or the powers that be in the universe her two cents and that was at least one of her requests. She probably had something to do with sweet AP, IB, and SAT scores (if you know the college application gamed in the US), college acceptances and perhaps one marriage. I know she would love the artwork I am doing and that she would comment that I've always had an artistic sensibility, though I'm not anyone else would agree and though she would never dream of advising me to give up the day job for anything so iffy financially as art. My dad, a quiet man, would have enjoyed the bread. It would have been just his thing. No sugar and something that would go with brisket or chicken. He would have introduced me as his daughter the bread maker, proudly, succinctly and without fanfare (after he mentioned, as he always did, that I am a lawyer - though not practicing, which he neglected ever to mention). I wish, as with some other avenues I have pursued since he passed away, that he could be here. I guess one never ceases to internalize parental pride, even long past the lives of the parents.
Color guessing
And now, in the next week, off to make blue bread (very Bridget Jones) and, cross my fingers, a nice whole wheat and buckwheat concoction. I love kasha, so very intrigued by the buckwheat recipe. I might visit the supermarket or the local food coop and purchase some "back up" flours in case doubt about the ones already sitting in my freezer overtake me. Curious nonetheless to see what colorful shade the blue cornmeal produces. I'm thinking a cloudy-day-at-the-beach, sort of blue-mixed-with-beige shade of blue.
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