I have a banana stand to keep my bananas bruise free and fresh. I guess they were too fresh because they were peeling off the stand. I had the brilliant idea to bake banana bread. So, after the kids finally went to bed I got started. A friend who had moved away had given me cake flour–at least I thought it was. I looked at the package and read bread flour. Flour is flour, right?
Ha ha. I start mixing the batter, only it’s not batter. It’s really doughy and not blending all that well. Does it need water or milk? No. I’m not my sharpest at 10 pm, so it took a moment to connect the dots. Maybe it’s the flour. There I was wondering if I should toss it all out. But I hate to waste food. Well, it’s bread dough. It’s got enough sugar in it that the kids will probably eat it anyway. Okay, so it doesn’t have yeast and won’t rise, but it’ll make a great focaccia. Sure it will. I flatten it out in the bottom of a glass baking pan and baked it.
Writing is kind of the same. You start out with all these ingredients and it might even seem like it’s coming together. Then disaster. Nothing mixes right. The pieces don’t fit. You’r positive that you can’t achieve anything worth serving up to your readers. But, with patience, perserverance and ingenuity, the whole becomes clear and as you near the end, you wonder why you ever doubted yourself to begin with.
I’ve got to be honest, though. That so-called focaccia may be hard as a rock and completely inedible. I won’t know until tomorrow. That’s why I’ll stick with writing rather than baking, even if some of the same principles apply.
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I love to bake and write too. How did the bread turn out?
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Just as I thought, there was enough sugar to satisfy my boys. To me it tasted like sugary, buttery dough! Betty Crocker I am not!
I don’t do a lot of baking. Japanese apartments don’t come equipped with ovens. Usually your microwave is a combination oven. Think tiny. Baking cookies becomes an all day affair since I can only fit nine cookies at a time.
Ah well, at least I can buy Oreos.
Patrizia
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Wow! Very small! I don’t think I would deal well with that. I love to bake and make lots of cookies! What do you make, Patrizia?
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If I bake cookies it’s usually oatmeal or chocolate chip. Cakes aren’t too bad. I can do a quick banana bread with little fuss. But a serious baker would have problems in a typical Japanese house/apartment.
As western food is more common place now (Hey! I can even get Mexican ingredients now at the store), newer condos offer the option of an oven (about 2/3 size of US oven).
We rent, so I’m stuck.:sad:
Patrizia