So I'm taking a little break from the Communication Theories take home exam (Oh P.S. CMN3109-- go die) to post. I forgot that I started a blog yesterday, hence the no post thing. Oops.
So I have not been knitting Christmas presents, despite my best intentions to knit lines (hah sounds like a drug) as mini study breaks. Instead, I have been baking! Made a loaf of bread yesterday using the famous 5-minutes a day bread recipe... it was okay. This isn't the first time I've made bread (and I don't really understand yeastophobes). It was worth trying, I guess, and the crust was nice, but pretty bland and very dense. I found it a little bit too salty, as well. I think the density was my fault though, not the recipe's. But still. So today I'm trying a different recipe, just a slight twist on this recipe here. I'm hoping it will be more flavourful. Although I think it's impossible for it not to be, with the addition of a tad bit of whole wheat flour (just a quarter cup or so, and that's my modification to the recipe), sugar, milk and butter as opposed to just flour-water-salt-yeast. It's almost done its first rise, so I will (hopefully) be popping it out of the oven in two hours or so.
The thing about bread-making is that it doesn't really take too much effort, but it does require you to have at least 3 hours or so just around the house. I rarely make bread because of this. I've just realized though, that laundry takes me about the same amount of time and I almost never leave when I'm doing that (publicly shared washer-dryer), so there's no reason why I can't make bread too. Perhaps at the same time as laundry. Although not today. Laundry and I had a bit of a chat and it agreed to wait until Sunday.
As I was writing my timer for the first rise went off. It hasn't risen as much as I expected it would but, soldiering on, I've shaped it, and it does look like a pretty nice loaf. I'm thinking maybe the lack of rise is due to my addition of whole wheat flour. But oh wells. Back into the slightly-warmer-than-room-temperature oven to rise some more. I'm actually finding that the bread making process is making some really relaxing study breaks. I'll have to keep that in mind.
Second thing on the puttering-in-the-kitchen-avoiding-essay list of today is the making of Steph's (over at a Year of Slow Cooking) gingerbread latte. And Oh My is it ever good. Next time I make it I might cut the ginger just a little. It's very gingery... the original recipe calls for 2tsp of ginger to every 4 cups of milk, and if you know your ginger you'll know that that's more than it sounds. I was feeling cautious when I was preparing this so I gingerly cut back... using only 1 1/2 tsp (haha, see what I did there)... and it's still pretty strong. But SO GOOD. I'm gonna be up all night drinking these, I don't have any de-caf coffee (what's the point of coffee if it's decaf!! I guess now I know). I'm definitely going to try Steph's pumpkin spice latte next. MMMM.
Anyways. I really should get back to Edward Said's impact on the perception of media representations of Muslims post-9/11. Ugh. No I did not choose this topic. But I still have 5 more pages to write before the end of the night. :)
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