Book Entry 157: 1981 Attempt Number One at Yeast Bread

In early fall I decided to try my hand at making yeast bread.  I didn’t quite understand the dough needed to be slightly warm in order to rise.  After tenderly mixing and kneading my dough I waited the allotted time for it to rise.  I waited and I waited.  I waited an extra two hours.  When nothing happened, thinking I had failed and again wanting to hide the evidence, I took the dough out to the edge of the orchard where the dirt was soft and buried it in a shallow hole.  

As luck would have it later that warm afternoon Adam was puttering around on the three-wheeler and discovered a huge soft lump in the ground close to a levee.  At first he thought it might be a gopher hole.  He poked the mound with a stick.  When he got a clump of the dough on his stick he recognized it smelled like the kitchen had smelled earlier.

 It seems a combination of me burying the dough and the warmth of the afternoon sun had caused the dough to rise.  Adam knew I was hiding something again!  He showed Larry the soft fragrant lump in the dirt.  Naturally they came straight into the house asking me if burying dough was a new way to get it to rise.  When they took me out to see the now fluffy sweet smelling gob of dough I had to laugh too. 

Larry said it was a good thing I hadn’t fed “that” mistake to the pigs because they would have eaten it before it raised and it would probably have swelled in their bellies and killed them!  I was happy too.  It was bad enough I had to live down the fact the pigs wouldn’t eat my pickles I can’t imagine needing to admit my bread dough killed the pigs!

When we finished laughing I was actually happy the dough had been found and excited it had risen.  I tucked away this incident in the baking section of my brain for use later that year.  

A few days later I was taking trash out when I noticed Adam walking slowly kicking dirt clods around as if he was searching for something.  When I asked what he was doing he grinned and said, “Oh mom, after finding the pickles in the pig trough and the “Dough Grave” I just thought I’d look to see if you’ve been trying any more new recipes!”