2004-06-26 - 5:03 p.m.
I made beer bread today. I make my own bread from time to time. It�s cheap and that sort of thing. My recipe for beer bread is easy. And no, I�m not trying to get my children drunk; the beer helps make it rise. Don�t be so silly. But when I make it, it takes me back to other times in my life. Like when I first got the recipe. I got it out of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook. And reading from where the recipe is (a typed out sheet of paper stacked with a pile of other hand-typed recipes) it takes me back to THAT memory too, of typing them all up in the dead of night before the library book was due back.
I was married and I had a baby. Just one. Now I have three kids, but when I just had one baby, I discovered that I was a good typist and I was really smart (still am both of these) and that I was able to be a damn good cook and baker (still am). I typed out a whole bunch of recipes that I could see myself being able to make and would cook them. I was going to school then. I took Composition II with Literature Emphasis. It was a telecourse and so you had to do the homework that was listed and send in your assignments. I kicked so much ass thanks to my love for reading and my interest in writing and got As all semester long out of all four classes I took. Another one was a math class and I can�t remember the other two classes. I love school (college).
So making bread or almost any of the familiar recipes that I made at that time brings me back to my love for school and my expert typing well into the night of the Chicken Soup For the Soul Cookbook while my delinquent husband slept on the couch away from me and away from my life. It was fine with me. But it ticked me off when I would make those recipes and the food, my God! It tasted wonderful and he barely tried most of it. I realized later that he did drugs that gave him zero appetite. Plus, he wasn�t there most of the time, which became also fine with me cuz I started not missing him or caring where he was. I later found out he cheated on me�a lot. He won�t ever admit that.
But when I bite into my warmed beer bread, I think of a lot of the bread recipes I baked one afternoon. I was dogsitting my sister�s Doberman who was young and ornery and so I paid close attention to his whereabouts around my new baby. He was a pig, too, so I had to watch him around my yummy food too. He�d go right up on the kitchen counter and steal almost anything. But that day, or that weekend, I made carrot bread (called Twin Carrot Loaves in the Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook) and beer bread and probably something else. I was just really good at it. I thought I would do it forever.
I do that a lot in my life. When I get in a certain lifestyle, I think I�ll do it forever�except stripping or partying. I never see myself doing that forever. But, I don�t think I baked any bread at all last year. I was too busy being depressed. So, now that I am doing it again this year, I feel happy that I was right that I would do it forever. Baking your own bread is kind of gallant. Not many people do it. My recipe is super easy.
3 cups self-rising flour (if you don�t have self-rising flour, for every cup of regular or all-purpose flour, you add 1 � tsp of baking powder and � tsp. Of salt and that�s for every cup of flour you are using that is �supposed� to be self-rising but isn�t, m�bien),
3 heaping tbsps. Of any kind of sugar
1 12 oz. Bottle of room temperature beer (any kind)
Put it in a greased pan after mixing and put a piece of aluminum foil loosely over the top of the greased pan (which helps the crust get crustier with baking). Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for one hour but when you have fifteen mins. left, splash 2 tbsps. Of milk on the top of the rising loaf. Cover it up with aluminum foil again and let it finish out the baking time.
Once you eat it, you�ll feel smarter and better about life.
