Day Twenty-Two: Sourdough Success
William has started waking up at around seven each day, and this is affecting my ability to get work done in the mornings. This morning he woke up wanting to "type words." For this fun activity, he sits on my lap at my computer and works on a word doc. He types random letters, hits the space bar, and sees if they get underlined in red squiggles. When the word he's invented, like yghtu7, inevitably is underlined in red, he get's upset that it's not a real word. We do this over and over. He has learned how to change the color of the letters, so he does multicolored words too. Does this count as Pre-K education?
It was a gray day today, but wasn't raining. My main endeavor this morning was to do the final steps of baking my very first sourdough bread. I had mixed the starter, flour, and water Sunday night and was supposed to add more water, flour, and the salt this morning, let it rise again for a few hours, "folding" it every 30 minutes, then form the loves and bake. I realized, however, that I had made the mistake of adding ALL the flour and water the night before instead of the part required for the "stiff levain." So, now all I needed to add was the salt, but I needed to add it to already mixed dough... I pressed it flat, sprinkled part of the salt on, kneaded that in, then pressed it flat again, sprinkled salt on, kneaded it in, until I had incorporated all the salt. I let it rise again for a while, folding every so often, loosely following the precise instructions in my cookbook. Then I formed two round loaves (boules, if we're gonna be fancy), let them proof, then sprinkled flour on top and did some pretty slashing, and put them in the hot oven with a sheet pan of water at the bottom for steam.
An hour later, bread! And oh, what bread! It was truly, truly delicious, as-good-as-from-a-bakery sourdough bread. We ate one entire boule before the night was over. We made it into a supper of bread, cold meat, cheese, apple slices, carrots, and raspberries.
But I get ahead of myself! That was the story of my day as told by bread, but I skipped so much! One thing William wanted to do after he was done typing was look at toys online. I let him do this just to keep him occupied but quickly regretted it. Taiya also wanted to look at toys, and both of them looking at toys led to a whine-fest of seriously irritating proportions. Taiya even cried over a Num Nom she wanted so bad, her life would be utterly desolate without it. William followed suit while looking at remote control cars. The funny thing is, they have been happily playing at home for three weeks, most of the time without their toys. They have a whole wall of toys in their room, and most of them have sat on the shelves while they played outside, or played with Legos, or played with one or two stuffed animals, or made stuff out of Sculpy, and on and on. But seeing all these things they never knew they wanted on the computer screen brought out their desire for more, more, MORE!
I made them shut the screens and refused to let them look again. I told them, "It is making you miserable, and it is silly." That may not have been the best tack to take, but it was so obvious to me that they are better off not even looking at the world of plastic crap available to them.
I had a meeting at one o'clock, which I attended on the porch with my laptop. Our internet is so slow, though, that I got booted off the call twice. At that point I gave up on it. During this meeting, Jeremy had come and told me that the governor of Arkansas announced that schools will be closed for the rest of the year. We knew it was coming, and yet hearing it out loud was tough. Taiya has been really missing her friends lately, and though she was excited by the news, I know it's going to be hard for her. It's definitely going to be a challenge for me and Jeremy too. People always say parenting takes a village, and we, like parents everywhere, are forced to give that up. It's not easy to maintain one's mental health, honestly, and there are times when I just want to curl up in bed and binge-watch every Jane Austen movie ever made. But there have been times of so much joy, too, that if we can make it through the bickering and day-to-day annoyances, we can make this a magical time for us all. It's just going to be hard. I tell Taiya and William regularly when they're struggling with something, "Yes, this is hard, but you can do hard things." Now I just need to tell myself that.
Two joyful things that happened today were: we talked to my mother on the phone, and that was wonderful. It's such a help to talk to someone who really understands, and can laugh at the ridiculousness of it all with me. At the end of the call, she inspired us all to paint and draw her pictures to mail her. We're going to be picture pen pals!
It was a gray day today, but wasn't raining. My main endeavor this morning was to do the final steps of baking my very first sourdough bread. I had mixed the starter, flour, and water Sunday night and was supposed to add more water, flour, and the salt this morning, let it rise again for a few hours, "folding" it every 30 minutes, then form the loves and bake. I realized, however, that I had made the mistake of adding ALL the flour and water the night before instead of the part required for the "stiff levain." So, now all I needed to add was the salt, but I needed to add it to already mixed dough... I pressed it flat, sprinkled part of the salt on, kneaded that in, then pressed it flat again, sprinkled salt on, kneaded it in, until I had incorporated all the salt. I let it rise again for a while, folding every so often, loosely following the precise instructions in my cookbook. Then I formed two round loaves (boules, if we're gonna be fancy), let them proof, then sprinkled flour on top and did some pretty slashing, and put them in the hot oven with a sheet pan of water at the bottom for steam.
An hour later, bread! And oh, what bread! It was truly, truly delicious, as-good-as-from-a-bakery sourdough bread. We ate one entire boule before the night was over. We made it into a supper of bread, cold meat, cheese, apple slices, carrots, and raspberries.
But I get ahead of myself! That was the story of my day as told by bread, but I skipped so much! One thing William wanted to do after he was done typing was look at toys online. I let him do this just to keep him occupied but quickly regretted it. Taiya also wanted to look at toys, and both of them looking at toys led to a whine-fest of seriously irritating proportions. Taiya even cried over a Num Nom she wanted so bad, her life would be utterly desolate without it. William followed suit while looking at remote control cars. The funny thing is, they have been happily playing at home for three weeks, most of the time without their toys. They have a whole wall of toys in their room, and most of them have sat on the shelves while they played outside, or played with Legos, or played with one or two stuffed animals, or made stuff out of Sculpy, and on and on. But seeing all these things they never knew they wanted on the computer screen brought out their desire for more, more, MORE!
I made them shut the screens and refused to let them look again. I told them, "It is making you miserable, and it is silly." That may not have been the best tack to take, but it was so obvious to me that they are better off not even looking at the world of plastic crap available to them.
I had a meeting at one o'clock, which I attended on the porch with my laptop. Our internet is so slow, though, that I got booted off the call twice. At that point I gave up on it. During this meeting, Jeremy had come and told me that the governor of Arkansas announced that schools will be closed for the rest of the year. We knew it was coming, and yet hearing it out loud was tough. Taiya has been really missing her friends lately, and though she was excited by the news, I know it's going to be hard for her. It's definitely going to be a challenge for me and Jeremy too. People always say parenting takes a village, and we, like parents everywhere, are forced to give that up. It's not easy to maintain one's mental health, honestly, and there are times when I just want to curl up in bed and binge-watch every Jane Austen movie ever made. But there have been times of so much joy, too, that if we can make it through the bickering and day-to-day annoyances, we can make this a magical time for us all. It's just going to be hard. I tell Taiya and William regularly when they're struggling with something, "Yes, this is hard, but you can do hard things." Now I just need to tell myself that.
Two joyful things that happened today were: we talked to my mother on the phone, and that was wonderful. It's such a help to talk to someone who really understands, and can laugh at the ridiculousness of it all with me. At the end of the call, she inspired us all to paint and draw her pictures to mail her. We're going to be picture pen pals!
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| Jeremy teaching the art of spinning chips while playing Left Right Center. |
The second joyful thing that happened was, I decided we needed to clean and rearrange part of the porch to move a dining table outside. In doing so, we discovered a dice game called Left Right Center, which I've never heard of and don't know where it came from. Taiya, William, and I sat down to figure it out, and it ended up being so fun! William had a hard time every time he lost, breaking down in tears (which I remember doing when my brothers beat me playing "Sorry," so I can sympathize), but he wanted to keep playing, so we did. Taiya was even nice enough to try to roll the dice so he would win. Then after dinner Jeremy played with us, and it was such easy, silly fun. I think it's time we raid the board game section of Walmart next time Jeremy has to load up on groceries. It's essential, dammit!
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