Blogging About Bread

Today was an important day for me at work for several reasons-- the most important being, I learned I could make bread! Yes, I can join Jesus at the table and break bread with Him that I myself made.

Grape Focaccia Bread, to be precise.

To be less incendiary, let me explain myself. My best friend Keagan's cousin Oakley, who is also my friend, shared with me a link to this cooking website/blog called Smitten Kitchen. I was immediately in love. The writer/chef takes excellent photos, writes out great recipes, and gives some really insightful tips. I can't wait to try out more of her stuff.

The one that immediately caught my eye, however, was her recipe for Grape Focaccia With Rosemary. I decided to give it a try.

Sure, I had never baked bread before, and sure, I was a little scared. The recipe called for water at precise temperatures and active yeast. But I've been baking "professionally" for half a year now, and I figured it was time to step up my game.

That night at work, I got the necessary active dry yeast (I don't just have that lying around). Then I worked until nine PM, where Nick and I took a quick (relatively) detour and saw/met Jon Stewart and his crew at a book signing. That was neat. They were all really nice. I told Jon Stewart that Nick would one day be working for them and he was super cool and asked "when" and then said The Onion was stealing all the funny people. Mr. Oliver and I talked about rainbows. All in all, it was a successful event.

Anyway, back to bread!

As you can see by the recipe, it involves a lot of kneading and a lot of patience. After I made sure the yeast was good (it involved this foaming/sugar test) and I added flour and kneaded, etc, I covered the mixture with a ton of good quality olive oil and let it rise for another two hours.

The bread, rising:

Then I slathered it some more with olive oil and such, let it rise some more after splitting the balls in half

, and then got it ready to go into the oven!

Look at all the sliced grapes, coarse sea salt, and sugar on the bread! How beautiful!

There is something so relaxing about kneading/touching uncooked dough. It feels like nothing I've ever touched before. I loved it. Also, the scent of fresh rosemary baking with olive oil reminded me of childhood visits to Italian restaurants. This made me so happy.

It was really invigorating, making all this bread-- a basic human sustenance -- successfully. I felt really whole. Which is strange, I know it's just food, but still... this wasn't some baked dessert where throwing extra sugar in covers any mishaps. This required me to be precise and good at my job. And I did it.

AND THEN IT WAS DONE! AND I SUCCESSFULLY MADE FOCACCIA BREAD!

Mmmmm, Yummmmy!