Friday, December 16, 2016

Babes see Red

Best laid plans, as they say.

Last week, mid-work project, my laptop died.  I immediately rushed it over to my computer repair lady, who, after 24 hours, declared it unusable.  The next morning I went to a local store, purchased a new laptop, delivered it to my repair lady, then waited (impatiently) until all files could be transferred and I could resume work and life.

Meanwhile, with enforced free time, I thought of all the things I could do, like bake bread and sew. 

But, no. 

Everything I needed was -- wait for it -- on the computer. 

Such is life nowadays that every important file or access point is on the computer, and when it dies, life is interrupted.

For this month's bread, I knew I needed beets, which I actually had, so I went ahead and put them in the oven to roast and soften.  While doing that, a friend and I disappeared into the garage to move boxes and search for those still-elusive items.  Two-plus hours later, I remembered the beets, definitely roasted and soft.  After cooling, they went into the fridge.

I made a distress call to the group, and, thankfully, I once again had access (via my phone) to the recipe.  Tuesday was the big day, both for bread baking and computer access (yay).

Did I pay attention to the vitals of the beets?  No.  I peeled them, dropped them into the blender, added the milk, and pureed away.  (I should mention that my blender is vintage 1971, so it's beginning to be cranky on some of its settings.)

Using the alternate recipe, I made the dough and set it out to rise.  (Another mention here:  the dog is afraid of the furnace, so the inside house temperature is around 65 degrees.  Not conducive to proofing bread in this lifetime.)  While the bread was trying to rise, I ran over to the computer repair lady's house to pick up the computer (huzzah!).  It only took another 24 hours to find all the appropriate software, load it, and return to some semblance of normalcy. Sadly, all my browser bookmarks disappeared, so the task of remembering and recreating them will fill my weeks to come.

By now, the bread dough was risen.  I shaped three braided loaves, and when they were ready, popped them into the oven.  It is a finely-tuned dance -- waiting for the oven to come to temperature (20 min.) without over-proofing the dough.



The end result was near-perfect.  A lovely pinkish-red bread and a non-beet flavor.  One loaf went home with my friend, and one will go to work with me today.  Always good to share.




This bread is definitely Buddy-worthy, so check for details on Cathy's website, Bread Experience

8 comments:

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

Computer tails of woe but my oh my what beautiful bread! Cheers to unpacking, bread and catching the computer back to norm.

hobby baker Kelly said...

Oh dear, I hate losing bookmarks! I have a fear of my pinterest boards being wiped out too. So glad you were able to cobble it all together and get those pretty loaves baked. And yay, new laptop!

Cathy (Bread Experience) said...

Wow! All that and you still baked some beautiful braided loaves. That's too bad that you weren't able to retrieve the bookmarks file. I would be lost without mine for sure. But, those are some gorgeous loaves!

Karen said...

I know what you mean when your entire list of things to do are all on your computer! At work, I cannot function without mine. So glad you were able to bake along and put up this lovely post. Love Lora's blog, great choice!

Elizabeth said...

At least your dog allows you to crank the house temperature up to 65....

And I know what you mean about keeping everything on the computer. I did scrawl things onto a piece of paper but still had to go racing up and down the stairs to see what I had missed (which is a good way to warm up in a house where it's not the dog who is afraid of the furnace...).

Your bread looks beautiful!

Lien said...

O no a dead computer, that is such an annoyance. I hope you made a recent back up!!
Your breads look very pretty, I too liked that they didn't taste too much like beet :)

Katie Zeller said...

Computer problems suck! I used to proof my bread on top of the furnace / boiler - it was the warmest place in our also cold house

Cakelaw said...

Great looking loaves Judy! You pulled it off despite the trying circumstances.