Forget the cake...eat bread

I finally made a perfect loaf of bread...it's a labour of love. Worked on and fermented for hours, just to yield one normal sized loaf. Baking a cake is 6th standard biology compared to bread making's understanding Grey's Anatomy. Cake batter is simple. You mix everything togther and bake it. Even if you did not do the sugar and butter creaming first, or added the eggs without separating the yellows and the whites, cake still tastes like cake.


Bread dough is so fickle.
The salt should not be directly added to the yeast+warm water mixture. the sugar should. too much flour, and your bread tastes like cardboards' cousin.
You have to knead and knead for ten solid minutes for proper gluten strands development.
Then it has to rise to double its size in the perfect temperature with good, living yeast of the exact right amount.
Then after the first time the dough rises,(it might not rise at all, if any one parameter is screwd up, old yeast, water not warm enough, water too hot that kills yeast,too much yeast it makes dough rise too fast and collapse, etc etc) you got to punch it down and shape it.
If you punch it down a little too much, your bread is flat and tastes a little of the alcohol that couldnt escape. If you dont punch enough, your dough will overrise and collapse.
After punching down and shaping it, it has to rise again.
Then you bake it in the oven at the exact right temparature, a small deviation could cause the crust to form too soon too thick that it cannot be broken through without a hammer.

So, after overcoming all the odds( many imperfect loafs later), yesterday I made the perfect loaf. Properly crusted outside, soft and spongy bread with good air-holes and slicing it was a peice of cake :)
Am thinking that now that I have troubleshooted and found out what I was doing wrong (it was the second rise, it just wouldnt rise, tuns out i was kneading again, when all i should have done was press the dough down softly a couple of times and carefully shaped it without pulling it too much) and perfected bread making, I should turn my attention to making croissants, which are much tougher, because of the many layers it has, that require folding and folding the dough over a rectangle of butter.

Did you know that money is called dough because of bread dough???? din't realise that before :) Too many conotations about bread being directly equalled to money in western idioms....bread and butter, which side bread is buttered on, put bread on the table bla bla....

To crossiants!!!!

And the verdict is

I am not made for dating more than one guy at a time.....I feel like I am cheating on the other two...and thus ends my career as a Playa!!!!

I am going to date one guy ...and one guy only at a time...

In other news, the novel I am working on ( Oh yeah, 'she's trying to be a writer' - as one of my cynical writer friends, who has seen plenty of society men and women in Bombay say that they are writing a book, would say. It is the 'in' thing these days for jobless people to work on a novel in a desultory fashion, like writing a chapter a year and boast about it at parties. But this book has been in my head for almost five years now. ) is progressing quite well, am done with the first half of it. Have put it away for a few days in the hope that I will get some perspective as to the direction in which it is going to go.

I also need to get back to baking a few 'countless calorie' desserts and get indulging...all the dieting I have been sticking on to makes me bad tempered and mean before breakfast...am not Kareena Kapoor after all and do not need to get into a size zero dress.

AV

Of dating three men at the same time

Technically, it is two boys and one man....and when I say dating, I am talking about exactly that. Pleasant conversation, food, and the occasional movie. I have not slept with any of the three of them and I do not plan to, at least not in the near future...

I have realised that the axe will fall shortly...and I will stick my head into the "mangalsutra' noose very soon...and am exercising my right to choose, before my parents do it for me.

So I am considering my options....and meeting men who ask me out...being set up at times, if you will...and all the boys/men I meet seem pleasant enough. But is this one the one? Is he worth spending time with? are the questions I am plagued with...

As the risk of thinking corny...I think of the 'So, when do you know its love?' tag line of jaane tu ya jaane na'...except I have no lofty ideals of love....but the line doesnt sound as effective when you substitute 'love' with 'true companionship' does it ?

Choices, choices!