Making Bread

Seems like since I had a Grandma Baker, I would be better at baking things, but apparently baking skills are not genetic. We knew that we would eventually run out of French Baguettes and would have to bake our own bread. I had bought yeast packets before we left Tahiti, just for such an occasion. I tried my hand at the bread making and it came out flat as a pancake (almost). The piece of bread on the left here is from the first try. So I tired a second time. Which is what is in the pans cooling. I looked better, but still did not rise very much.

We ate it anyway, because it slid down with Virginia Applebutter and Apricot jam!

Third try was Mike's turn.

Looked like it was going to turn out well.

It too looked OK, but still did not rise very much. That is roasted fresh coconut next to Mike's bread.

Our savior turned out to be Eva on Kamiros, our German friends. She not only gave us one of her beautiful loaves of bread, she also gave us sourdough starter. So next time hopefully our bread will come out looking like hers!!

I was quite disappointed, thinking that the yeast I bought in Tahiti was bad. But what I finally figured out was that I had been keeping it in a cupboard that shared a wall with the engine room. I think I killed all of my yeast by letting it get too hot. So now we keep both our yeast packets and our Sophie Dough in the refrigerator. We named the sourdough after our doggie Sophie, because our friend Doug has a very old sourdough named Igor from the 1800s. And apparently most people name their dough. Sophie seems appropriate since she loved to eat!