The State Fair of Texas

It seems the State Fair of Texas is ingrained in my being. As a child, the school system would have Fair Day and Daddy would take off work and we'd go as a family. We took our children and then stopped going for a while. We have recently revived the practice because we have season ticket to the Dallas Summer Musicals and the concluding show is during the Fair.

So we go early the day of the musical and hit the high spots: the Texas Wine Garden, the automobile show, and the Creative Arts building. And most years we'd see the bread baking contest and I'd think: My breads look as good as those.

So this year, I decided to put my yeast where my mouth has been and enter. Alas, the contest wasn't on the same day as the musical, so we'll just have to make two trips, but I was going to participate no matter. I enlisted my husband to help carry and we circled the day in red, so to speak.

You could enter five categories. So I did. No sense in being shy about this. Yeast loaf, white; Yeast loaf, other; Yeast coffeecake; Quick coffeecake; Gingerbread. I pulled out those recipes near and dear to me and made a plan.

The first obstacle was how to carry them. We rigged a box to hold both the gingerbread and the yeast coffeecake. A large shopping bag with handles was enlisted for the three loaves. I printed the recipes, filled in the forms, attached my $2/per to it and went to bed.

The State Fair grounds are one hour and 15 minutes from us in good traffic. Sunday mornings at 7:15, which is when we left, they are virtually vacant. We were not the first people in the parking lot ($15), but we were close. Not having our musical tickets to double as admission, we forked out the senior rate. ($12/per) The baking sign-in started at 9 and we were 8th in line.

Here is where I learned some valuable lessons. Everyone else had a little red wagon in which to carry their baked goods. Presentation may not be everything, but it may be a plus on the subconscious level and I didn't have any. Contestants were putting their entries on glass and in baskets. Mine were on paper plates provided by the judges. You are supposed to pick up your baked goods afterward, so you can get your fancy plates back, but I ask you: Do you want back a baked good which has been sliced and diced and breathed on by multiple people? Do you, as one person in line suggested, intend to freeze it for the holidays?

Yeech! NO! (After it was all over, I went to one of the ladies in charge and donated my entries. Besides, the spouse had thrown away the box and the bag and I couldn't carry anything home.) Lesson number whatever.

Judging takes forever, probably because there were 12 categories and well over 100 entries. Finally, with judging starting at 10:30, we were being given the good news after one. And... drum roll here... I won a ribbon!

Third place in yeast bread, loaf, white. A difficult category I was told. I am pleased. This is the buttermilk bread which I usually make for the Library's Pumpkin Patch Bazaar which this year is next Saturday. And now, I can add "State Fair winner" to the tag!

Would I have liked to have placed in all the categories? You bet! But then, there's always next year.

The Baking Blues

Today is our library's annual spring bazaar. It's a four-fold event: used books, beautiful potted plants, garden items, and a bake sale.

For the first time in a while, the bazaar is being held before Easter. This has expanded our crafts into things for children like yard bunny stakes and eggs. It has also expanded our baking.

I like to make yeast breads so I dug up international bread recipes: hot cross buns, Russian Easter bread, Brazilian. The hot cross buns were going well, the Brazilian bread made with pineapple and Brazil Nuts rather exceeded my expectations in size (next time I'll divide the dough in thirds), and the Russian should have been so easy.

Alas, no. For starters, the recipe is so old coffee was still sold in one-pound cans. And while I had smaller cans, they all have inside rims, so I reverted to 9-inch loaf pans which proved too big.

Then I hit too many buttons on the oven and cut the oven off. Didn't mean to. Didn't discover it until I checked on the three loaves of bread at the 25 minute mark and noted they'd risen nicely but weren't exactly baking. So I took a deep breath and turned the oven on. They eventually baked up, but by then, I'd started a second batch.

I didn't have any more almonds, so I switched to pecans. Calling the second batch "southern" Russian Easter bread. Kept the oven on. Since I didn't have coffee cans, the loaves are a bit rough around the edges, not smooth like the first slow-risen batch.

But the crowning touch was dropping the instant read thermometer in the water-milk-butter mix warming to 120-130. I pulled it out, washed it, opened it, dried it, got the battery straightened out and then the two little wires which connect top to bottom came out. I may be down one good thermometer if I can't figure out where said wires go.

On the up side, I cut open a loaf from the first batch to share this morning and to make sure it was edible. Even on slow rise, it's just fine.

The ice days continue

This is the third day of ice. While schools are still closed, the roads are fairly clear and I will venture out today. For the last two I've stuck to sweats and no make-up and it is time to move on!

Yesterday I chipped nearly one-inch thick ice off the patio to make a path from the back steps to the gate in order to get the trash out this morning. (Also, I just wanted to get outside and do something and this I could do sitting down. Hammer, hammer, hammer, ice crack! Pitch the pieces into the flower bed. Next section.) I also baked a batch of cinnamon rolls from a really strange recipe which proofed the yeast first. I don't normally do that; I convert all proof-first recipes into the yeast-in-with-the-flour kind, except this recipe wasn't going to do that. Then there were a lot of spices in the dough, scads of ginger and cinnamon, and that was fine, but they were just... different. Doubt I'll make them again but they did keep me occupied through the three rolling blackouts we had.

Never had rolling blackouts before and the entire town wasn't subject to it, as I have friends who never lost their electricity in 15 minute increments. Today, we seem fine. I hope.

As to Tuesday's six loaves of yeast bread... so worth the trouble. SO GOOD.

There was a reason I stopped baking that recipe...

...and now I know what it is.

With ice and snow on the ground, with the sun shining and the wind howling, with the temp at 22 and set to go lower, not higher over the next three days, it seemed like a good idea to bake bread.

I have several standard bread recipes which I'm quite good at baking. I'm also not afraid to try something new, but since most bread recipes of the white/wheat variety are the same and we certainly didn't need cinnamon rolls (although that may be on tomorrow's agenda--see the above paragraph), I decided to go for quantity.

Years--YEARS--ago, I had made a recipe which produced 6 loaves of bread. Six. I knew it took a bag of flour and assorted other staples I was bound to have on hand, and so I went hunting for it. Found it, with appropriate notes on flour cup variances and size of loaf pan, and the date: October 1977. Wow. I was a new mother. Wasn't I an adventurous soul.

But I hadn't had a Kitchenaid do-it-all mixer then. Surely this would be easier. But as I poured in the 8 cups of liquid and the half bag of flour, as the machine started making little grindy noises (it's at least 25 years old, it's allowed), as I remembered I hadn't put in any sugar (add, add, add), I also realized that this slurry of dough was going to have to come out of the bowl and onto the countertop.

I put on my kitchen-expendable gloves I use for messy things and plunged in, adding flour and lifting and pushing the dough around.

Then the phone rang. I was tempted not to answer it, but if it were my husband, he'd wonder why I wasn't and what was wrong, so I pulled off one of the dough-filled gloves with my teeth, and answered. My mother-in-law. Told her what I was up to, answered the question (called her back with more details later), and got back to the mess.

The phone rang.

Now I can go days without the phone ringing at home. DAYS. But I answered, the information from a friend made me glad I did, and I finally got back to packing probably a bag and a half of flour into these 6 loaves.

I dug out the stew pot, put the mess in the oven with the oven light on, and cleaned it all up. Less than an hour later, it is threatening to overflow the pot and I stop it before the dough, now sticky but more compliant, spills over into the oven.

Longer story short, there are now three 1-1/2 lb loaves baking and three 2-pound loaves rising.

This stuff had better be good, but I now know why I abandoned this recipe in favor of the three-loaf buttermilk bread which is standard here. I could have made it twice and been eating it now.