officially domesticated

today i made bread for the first time.  i was initially inspired by isaac, but hadn't attempted it earlier because i have always thought of myself as a very ill baker indeed.  my cookies always taste like cakes with burnt crusty bottoms.  then jesse gave me a beautiful new mixer for christmas.  my beautiful new mixer came with a dough hook, and a dough hook can make anyone a good baker of breads i think.  

i was going to photograph the whole process, but i was so concentrated on correctly using the mixer that i forgot to photograph the main part of the breadmaking process: that is, the kneading.  so just pretend the mixer mixed the ingredients (yeast, flour, etc.), kneading on speed 2, and then it became a big dough ball.  then i cut the dough in half, and rolled it out into two loaves.  here are some photos of what happened next:

it was a special sort of bread which required refrigeration for several hours.

after refrigeration, i punched the gas out.  truthfully, it wasn't especially gassy, but it felt good to beat the shit out of dough, so this step went on for quite some time.  then i put it in the oven.

here is the finished product.  

truth be told, i have mixed feelings about letting a machine knead for me.  my bread will never know the touch of human hands lovingly kneading for halves of hours on end.   it knows only the cold and lifeless touch of a metallic hook.  i think in some ways i've done it an injustice.  my bread is soulless bread.  but it sure was delicious.