Pneumonia Update

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Day two stuck at home.  I am wondering if the bus that hit me, could back up and finish the job.  I am bored, tired, weak, and just down right not happy.  I have been trying to do things around the house to keep myself moving.  I don’t want to lay down and let this pneumonia get worse or get into other parts of my lungs.  So I thought I’d come into the kitchen and make something.  I decided on bread.  Not to hard, or intense.  Just throw everything in the ole Kitchen Aid stand mixer, then let it rise for a few hours, punch down and rise again then bake.  Sounds easy huh?  Wrong.  I like to mix all the ingredients, then kneed by hand so I can feel the dough and know its building up the right amount of glutens.   So I get the dough out on the board and start to knead.  Oops, I forgot I have no energy and my arms are screaming at my brain to send more power.  What’s this? I am now getting short of breath and hyperventilating somewhat.  I decide that I am done kneading the dough and I put it in a bowl to rise. 

Everything looks good about 2 hours later, the dough has doubled in size so I punch it down, divide it and let it rest another hour or so to double in size again.  Well when I get up from my little nap that I didn’t want to take, I find that the dough has risen somewhat, but seems to have spread out more than rise up. HMMMM…..

Into the oven it goes and set the clock to remind me to take it out.  When the stove notifies me of the time to remove the bread, I head to the kitchen, smelling that fresh sourdough smell.  I can’t wait to put some home made apple butter on this warm bread and enjoy.  Not that I’m hungry. I’ve hardly eaten in 3 days, but I know I need to and this smells wonderful.

Wait. What’s this?  I open the oven to find two very large in width sized breads.  These look more like focaccia then my beautifully risen balls of sourdough.  Oh well, they smell good so I cut into one of them.  Hey, where’s all the big air holes, the crumb of this bread is more like white bread and when I bite into it, its very chewy.  What happened?  I know that “Mable” my yeast starter is working.  As you can see in this video she is bubbling away and very healthy.

Let me think……Oh yea.  I didn’t knead the bread long or at all really because I have no strength.  So I built up know nice long gluten strands to help keep the dough’s shape.  Well that’s a whole day of baking down the drain, this bread looks like I feel.  We’re both deflated and just a little wider than we should be.  Guess its back to the couch for some rest.  I’ll have to come up with something easier to make tomorrow or the next day.