They are, of course, bread cookbooks. I decided on making a nice Sour Dough bread with the starter recipe in the Panera Bread Cookbook, until I read these words: let ferment 12 hours.
TWELVE HOURS??? I could be in CHINA by the time this fermentation is complete! I could have run not one but TWO entire Ironman triathlons! I could drive to the East Coast (well, if Nate was in the driver's seat, we'd likely be in roughly Ohio) or have repainted my kitchen! But for a loaf of bread? Maybe tomorrow. It's late already.
So, instead, I decide on a nice wheat bread. I get the starter going, leave it on the counter while I start a load of laundry and clean the 2nd floor. In thirty minutes, I am ready to mix the rest of the ingredients.
Including VEGETABLE SHORTENING. Well I don't know about you, but I find vegetable shortening repulsive and disgusting. It has no expiration date. It stays solid even when it is 100 degrees outside. It never changes in appearance. I am fairly certain, if there is a nuclear war, that the only 2 things left would be cockroaches, of course, and shortening. In fact, when I did my first triathlon, instead of buying expensive body glide, i was told to use Crisco. I did, and ended up with the worst sunburn ever. But I digress.
As the shortening was on the top shelf, and I am only five feet tall, I was forced to play the popular college game of "getting stuff with stuff". My sister claims she invented this game; truth be told, we have all played it. She just elevated it to a new level. The premise is this: LAZINESS. Imagine you are laying on the couch (in her case, likely hungover) and you need your glass of water, which is just out of reach, on the table. You immediately scan the area for any object that might be long enough for you to reach the glass of water. This is how you find yourself using a flipflop to push the remote into the glass, which rebounds against the physics books, moving just close enough for you to get it without lifting your head.
Or, coincidentally, how you find yourself using a butcher knife to get down a 2 pound container of vegetable shortening. obviously, I am a master at this game, as I have been short my whole life. But I didn't take into consideration the bottle of corn syrup. Which fell out of the cabinet. And hit the butcher knife. Which cut directly into my finger. to the knuckle.
It didn't start bleeding right away. That's the thing about Cutco knives. They do such a great job slicing and dicing, that when they slide through your skin you don't notice. As I looked up at my finger, it turned black. As the blood began to pour down my arm and pool on the floor, my first thought was "crap. I already proved the yeast. I have to finish this loaf before I deal with this cut."
So I did what any other sane person would do. I put a gauze pad on it, and taped it up with hockey tape. I figured it was waterproof; the blood couldn't seep through.....
Four dressings later, the bread was finished and rising on the stove, and a friend stopped by. Not wanting to be a martyr, I went on a three mile walk with her, only to get home in time to start driving the bus route home from school, and getting everyone where they needed to go for their after school activities. It really wasn't until the next morning when I couldn't get dressed by myself without it starting to bleed again that I thought "hm. Maybe I ought to get this looked at". but there was laundry and yard work and baking and cleaning to do....
So at 2 in the afternoon, I finally went to the urgent care center where, since it has been more than 8 hours since my injury, they put a gauze pad on it and taped it up. Well heck. I should have stayed home.
And made another loaf of bread. WITHOUT VEGETABLE SHORTENING.
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