A few years ago Melbourne had a natural gas crisis. Something happened to the supply of it and it became scarce. People were supposed to turn off their gas at the meter and not use it - it was that bad. There even reports in the media about gas supply companies going around and checking people's meters and locking them. I remember my mum was having cold showers as she had no gas to heat water with. If you are wondering what that has to do with the title of this post - I'll get to that I promise.
There were a few items in supermarkets that became scarce too as industry was also affected by the gas shortage - bread being one of them. With a young family I felt that bread was something that we needed to have on hand so I bought a bread making machine. You know the ones - put in all the ingredients, push a button and walk away to come back a few hours later to freshly cooked bread. It was great.
We had some nice looking loaves - small ones - but since I could cook 1 each day we always had fresh bread. The only problem was with the cutting of the bread. We would get slices that were thick at the top and then taper off to nothing. Or they'd be so thick it was like eating half the loaf at once. The kids loved the bread when freshly made but not so the day later when the crust had gone soggy. And we usually couldn't put in the toaster. If we did manage to cut a slice evenly enough and thin enough, nearly half of it would stick out at the top.
The gas crisis didn't last too long and so the bead machine was put away. It did make an appearance every so often, but now I think it was one of those kitchen gadgets that just slowly rust in the back of the cupboard.
I have had a bit of a 'get back to the old days' type of urge these last few years. I really feel that with the way people are mucking up the environment we need to re-skill ourselves with things our grandparents knew how to do. Like growing vegetables and fruits, making clothing (sewn or knitted), making food from scratch.
I do know how to cook a complete meal from scratch - and do it most nights. I can bake a cake, cook a roast, do a casserole (stew), could probably even make jam if I had to. But I have never made bread. Every where I look for bread recipes say it is dead easy and it appears to be so. I have even found a recipe/method that does not use bakers yeast. It's a sour dough bread so you make a starter and add to that to make the bread. Today I bought a ceramic pot to 'grow' my starter in from my local second hand shop.
So now we come to my dilemma. It is 18 days till Christmas and we go away for 3 weeks. So do I start a starter and make some bread between now and then and the last batch use the whole starter and then start all over again when we get back? Or do I not worry about making bread until I get home from our holidays?
Decisions, decisions!
