First steps in

Posted July 8, 2003

I was an only child, and I confess that I was spoiled rotten. Going off to college helped a little - I learned to get myself up in the morning, anyway - but nonetheless I found entering the "real world" to be a bit of shock when I decided to take a few years off from college.

It's always easier to do something yourself than it is to show someone how to do it, and Momma hadn't made an effort to teach me much about housekeeping, something she didn't particularly enjoy herself. I moved in with Jim with one recipe to my name - the Tuna casserole I'd learned to make in Home Ec.

Unfortunately, Jim had an aversion to Tuna casserole. Jim's mother had felt it her duty to teach him to eat peas. Since he refused them when served them "straight", she took to sneaking them into other dishes, like tuna casserole (which seemed reasonable) and like meat loaf (which surprised even me). Rather than expanding his culinary repertoire, this merely had the effect of poisoning him to tuna casserole and meat loaf, too.

Anyway, my day of reckoning was staved off for some time because we had a housemate who was a good cook; but when he moved on, I was faced with the prospect of learning to cook or eating Jim's hot dogs for the rest of my life.

I started out with my mother's disdain for chores, and I wasn't about to invest in a cookbook. For months I cooked out of a pull-out section from a Women's Day. I gradually discovered that I enjoyed to cook although I'm afraid I've never become as conscientious as Momma about biting the bullet and getting the housework done!

One of my first efforts was, oddly enough, bread. Bread is work, as anyone who's ever kneaded up a loaf or two will tell you, and I ordinarily eschew anything that's too much like work. Nonetheless there's an appeal to home-baked bread that motivated me to make the effort. To my chagrin, Jim, who trained as a potter, can knead rings around me; but even an imperfect loaf of fresh-baked bread is superior to the "balloon bread" I was used to from home.

My first recipe came from the back of a package of Fleishman's Yeast. Emboldened by my success, I got to thinking about rye bread. I seldom liked rye bread because I don't care for caraway seed. But if I made my own, I could leave the offending herb out!

My next trip to the co-op, I picked up some bulk rye flour. The next morning I set to work, simply substituting rye for wheat.

It didn't seem to rise very much. I shrugged and baked it anyway, expecting it to rise in the oven like the last loaf had.

It looked a lot like a brick when I pulled it out. Undaunted, I tried to cut off a slice. My bread knife didn't dent it. Thoroughly discouraged, I showed it to Jim. He laughed, took a saw to it, and hit it with a hammer, breaking it into chunks. (I may be making the hammer part up, but I don't think so.) We figured we could soak it in milk and eat it that way, sort of Stone Age cold cereal.

Even that didn't work. It stayed crunchy, and not crunchy like a walnut, but crunchy like small, jagged rocks. Even Mehitabel, our cat, wouldn't eat it, although she lapped up the milk and meowed for more.

The tightness of our budget made me think three times before throwing out food. The truncated, lumpy loaf sat on the counter for most of a week while I meditated in my heart how to consume it. Then I noticed it sporting a few new colors, and, grateful for the excuse, I threw it out.

I stuck to wheat flour after that, mixing in only small, insignificant amounts of rye to use it up. My loaves turned out fine. But it wasn't until after our marriage, when we got two lovely cookbooks as presents, that the mystery was solved.

There's no gluten in rye flour, and gluten's what gives the dough the elasticity to trap the carbon dioxide the yeast gives off as it grows, and rise. You have to use at least half wheat flour to make a loaf of rye bread.

In short, when all else fails, read the instructions!

By Ruby Jung, even the background. All rights reserved to the story. If you care for the background, you're welcome to copy and use it.

There were daylilies outside the back door to the kitchen. Orange ones, but this is the only photo I've taken of daylilies up to now, so it will have to do.