for being so focused on a full-as-F* day of work,
i sure found myself making a lot of food!
mmhmmm.
i guess that's exactly where the time goes, bros.
i mean,
when it's flying and frying and fleeting by,
the fast-paced race to make meals for me and mine takes priority.
what?
i make a lot of food for my peoples,
and i make it with or without their help-
for example,
before they even came close to waking up yesterday,
i had dough kneaded,
bread baking,
and cinnamon rolling.
uh-huh.
neighbors,
what happens when the leaveners are OVERactive,
in overabundance,
rising high, hard, fast, and aggressively,
up inside of a sweeeeeeet batch of cinnamony stuff?
...you get the PROOF.
actually,
you get a runaway OVERproof.
happily,
too much is the right amount,
and that's a good thing in this case-
i wanted flaky, chewy, buttery cinnamon bunzos,
but what i got was an explosive activation in record time.
i guess the kitchen was kinda hot,
but i had NO idea that my dough was gonna go after it like that.
by the time i rolled it out,
it was already doubling again, after a triple double dose of doing what it does.
in the past,
i've used exxxtra yeast for a very positive result-
in this case,
i probably could've taken it a little easier....
.....but only if i was a diapery baby who didn't believe in taking it to eleven!!!
so,
i had to contain my runaway rolls, lest they blarp out even further,
and distort beyond their ability to retain all that sugary spice in the centers.
allow me to provide you a teleport for checking:
ooooooooooooof.
they're BIG;
they're buttery;
they've got ooey, gooey, soft steamy centers;
there's allllll the cinnamon and friends rolled up within 'em;
and on top?
cinnamon vanilla icing drizzles!!!!
expert!
what'd i do to make this come true?
well,
i preheated my oven to 375F for starters,
then,
i mixed 3 cups of flour with half a tsp salt
2 tsp wheat gluten, (to keep it stretchy)
1/4 cup sugar,
one T highly active yeast,
and a cup of warmed vanilla almond milk,
with 6 T melted earth balance,
and as that was only marginally margariney and hot,
i stirred in a couple tsp of secret cold bread machine yeast,
as an experiment, which is the site-specific instance where i created the mutation.
yikes!
i used the dough hook on my mixer and beat it up for about 5 minutes,
then let it rest for ten,
befoire i rolled it out, and hooked it up-
the filling is a cup and a quarter+ of brown sugar,
a big scoople of butterish pats, (like almost a stick?)
cinnamon, vanilla bean, and in descending order of quantity:
ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and clove.
mmmmhmmmmm.
that got creamed up and spread over the puffiest dough i've ever tried to wrangle.
you may notice that the spirals aren't very tight...
...yeah.
this was an exercise in mitigating the exuberance of my tasty treat, for sure.
i baked 'em for twenty minutes inside a greased springform pan,
after i attempted to chill the impossibly sloppy dough roll,
before i cut into the sticky log and got sh!t everywhere.
uh-huh.
there's none left.
which i'd like to think is a testament to their delectable nature,
and not just the sweets-craving gluttony of all these folks hanging about.
*
why was it so hot?
well,
the temperature was high outdoors already,
and also because i'd had the oven roaring at 455F all morning,
adding hotness atop hotttness, heaped upon hotness from all the hottness.
what?
white sandwich bread is what was causing it,
and i think the results were well worth it:
yessir, that's a loaf of naturally-leavened regular-A* bread.
i know my children,
and i know i'll need to slowly acclimate their little faces to the full power of the
dark side of the crusty bread force.
so,
first things first,
a HIGH hydration heavy-lactic slow-bulk white mountain white loaf,
with an experimental cold-proof,
sans loaf-shaping.
the tang stayed low, but so did the oven spring.
which is fine.
because it tastes like beating a red dragon on a natural twenty critical hit
telekinesis spell that crushes it under a mountain of stalagtites.
if you don't know about that kind of action,
i feel bad for you.
real talk.
baking bread is a positive activity for heart and soul,
body and mind,
spirit and memory.
and i doo-doo that freaky sh!t.
good bread makes better people,
and i'm on a path to improving my children,
as enriching as the foldovers that create developed gluten chains in these loaves.
wow.
so much went on in this kitchen,
on either side of a day where so much tattooing took over my time,
that by nightfall i was destroyed, albeit sated with supper and sugar and sourdough.
i don't sleep much,
but,
holy crapola, have i been hitting the hay with concussive power the past few nights.
i am very grateful for the opportunities i take advantage of,
and for the companions i exist alongside of,
even if that's only in short spans, in hot spots, at dinnertables,
and when the moment is right.
*
i hope your plans include great food, better conversation, lots of laughs,
and the kind of togetherness that bonds and binds worthy warrior poets as a band,
forever and ever.......and ever;
never quiet, never soft.....
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