The Pyrex Bake-A-Round

I've not been very successful with bread baking in the past. My friends are. My friends make beautiful bread, and post photos of it, and I help to cheer their accomplishments, but inside I am secretly jealous.

Why can't I make bread? I think, gazing longingly at my oven. What's wrong with me?

The obvious answer, that I'm clearly descended from aristocracy rather than bread baking peasant stock and am therefore genetically predisposed to have others make bread for me, offers little comfort as I stare at small, salty, dismal loaves produced and quickly disposed of in my kitchen. I tried to address this problem earlier this year, using a kit, but met with only partial success.

That's why I was so excited the other day to find a happy collision of my Pyrex hobby and my cooking hobby:



The Pyrex Bake-A-Round, produced in the 1970's and possibly into the 1980's. The Bake-A-Round isn't particularly sought after by collectors, and is often found (like mine) in the box, but it was only three dollars, it wasn't broken, and the original instructions were still inside, so I figured it was worth a try. How could my bread possibly get any worse?

I assembled all of my tools and ingredients:



(At this point my friend Heather is looking at that Pyrex bowl and saying, "Old Orchard? You hate Old Orchard." It was a gift.)

The Bake-A-Round instructions said that I could use any bread recipe, so I figured that I would just try the mix again, since it was partially successful. I started activating my yeast in warm faucet water, and then set about greasing the inside of the Bake-A-Round, which is easier said than done:



Fortunately, the instructions said to start at one end and grease toward yourself. They also said not to use oil, which is why I didn't just spray the inside of the tube with cooking spray. I was kind of terrified that if I used spray the glass tube would explode in my oven, so I followed the instructions, and greased the hell out of that thing:



Then I got to work on the bread. The Bake-A-Round instructions said to shape your loaf on waxed paper, so I did:



I then realized that the loaf had to fit inside the Bake-A-Round, and therefore had to be longer and skinnier, rather than rounded, so I had to shape it again. Then, following the instructions, I slid the waxed paper into the tube:



The next step was a minor disaster. The Bake-A-Round instructions say to slide the dough to the middle of the tube, then turn it upside down, and the dough will fall off of the waxed paper, which you then slide out.

The hell it does.

If you ever have a Bake-A-Round of your own, grease the waxed paper, too.

After a lot of shaking and cursing, I extricated the waxed paper from the tube and tried to shake the dough back toward the center:



At this point you cover the ends of the tube with foil, then put it in the holder and leave it somewhere warm to rise. This has been a problem with my bread baking in the past. My apartment doesn't have a spot warm enough, usually. This time, though, I set the oven on "warm" and put the whole thing inside...

AND IT WORKED.



Look how much bigger the bread got! It rose! Never again will hunchbread shame my kitchen!

Excited, I warmed up the oven (which needs cleaning; don't judge) and slide the Bake-A-Round inside for baking:



I ignored it through the entire baking process, although I did keep an ear open for the sound of exploding glass. I didn't get an oven full of glass and bread dough, though.

I got a somewhat attractive loaf of bread:



It's round, and crusty, and soft and airy on the inside:



It's bread.

And I made it.

The Baker

Remember that time I made bread from scratch and it turned out to be a terrible nightmare loaf of horrors and sadness, and I swore, as God is my witness, I'd never bake bread again?

Well, I decided not to give up just yet, because I saw a commercial for this:



"Just add water!", the box says.

"Anyone can be a baker!", the commercial says.

I'm not just anyone, you know. I can screw up a kit or a mix like you wouldn't believe, no matter how hard I try to follow directions. Just ask the (in)Famous Fudge Kit, ruiner of Christmas for four years running. We'll see if anyone can be a baker, Fleischmann's. Oh, we'll see.

According to the directions I needed a large bowl. If there's one thing that's never in short supply around here, it's a large mixing bowl. I settled on my extra Pyrex Verde 403, because it was the right size and it matched the box:



I don't know that matching the box helps, but I also don't know that it doesn't help. Maybe it increases kitchen harmony.

Side note: I have an extra Verde 403 because I bought it separately at a yard sale. Then, later, I got all four of the Verde round mixing bowls for a really good price, so now I have one 403 in the display and one in the cabinet until I drop it on the floor and murder it or I happen to pick up the other pieces and end up with two sets.

Anyway, back to the bread and away from the Pyrex ramblings. The back of the box suggested some mix ins. I didn't want to go all out, but I figured since it was herb bread anyway, maybe some extra herbs would create some more harmony. I want that kitchen filled with good vibrations, damn it. I settled on a teaspoon of herbes de Provence:



because I know from past experience that they smell so effing good, and I want this to be the effing goodest loaf of bread ever.

With everything ready, and a silent prayer to Flour Jesus, I began to bake.

First, I mixed the yeast and sugar in my bowl:



I immediately added hot, but not boiling, water and stirred:



So far, everything seemed good. I consulted the instructions again, and was told to let the bowl sit for three minutes so that the yeast could activate. I would know it activated when it was "foamy". I set the timer, curated my social media for a few minutes, and returned to the bowl when the bell rang.

This is what I saw:



Not what I would call "foamy", but something definitely happened while I was gone. There were bubbles, and as I watched the bowl I saw movement, little puffs forming in the water. I decided that it was bubbling, and foam is made of bubbles, so maybe everything was ok.

The next step was to add the bread mix and mix ins, and to stir until a ball formed. I was warned by the box that dough may be stiff, which was an understatement:



That wooden spoon is standing straight up. I'm not touching the other end.

I was then instructed to put the dough on a greased baking sheet. Last time I did this I put it on a sheet of parchment paper on the sheet, but this time I decided to do exactly what I was told and to grease a cookie sheet until it God damned glistened in the kitchen light. The box said anyone could make bread, and I want to be anyone.



And yeah, my cookie sheets are stained, but it's because they're old. Stop judging me.

The box suggested using a teaspoon of flour on the top of the loaf to make it easier to shape, so I measured out exactly a teaspoon and tried to make my blob round:



I tried. It's not perfect. I then covered it with a dishtowel and left it to rise for 25 minutes.

It did not rise.

Oh, it got bigger:



but it's like me after college. It keeps getting wider, but not any taller. I didn't think I could do anything to change that, so I threw the pan in the oven, set the timer, and hoped for the best.

This is what happened:



Also, my kitchen and living room smelled wonderful, like a French bakery. I imagine it's how the village smells when Belle sings "Bonjour" in the beginning of "Beauty and the Beast", although it's much more likely that the village smells like farm animals, overripe cheese, and unwashed French peasants.

I went for some butter, and sliced off a piece:



And it's not bad. It's a little tiny bit doughy, and mine isn't nearly as tall as the one on the box. Maybe my apartment isn't warm enough? The box said I should let it rise in a warm, draft free place, but maybe my place wasn't as warm as it should be? Maybe I should have waited for more foam? Maybe my initial water wasn't hot enough? Maybe I should have waited for more foam? Who knows, really?

What's important is that I made bread.

I am anyone.

Two Weekends Ago Part 1: I Made Some Banana Bread

I didn't do much of anything this past weekend, because I have a stomach bug that's been going around and spent most of the weekend desperately trying to keep soup down. I could have written about that, but the sentence I just finished is probably all you want to hear about that particular adventure, so let's talk about last weekend instead, ok?

I spent the entire weekend, except for an insane trip to Panera, eating banana bread that I baked myself from Mom's recipe. In sharing recipes, Mom has learned to anticipate the kind of questions that I will ask, and now provides things like exact measurements and descriptions of color and consistency. We've come a long way since the days when I sort of suspected her of Martha Stewart-esque culinary sabotage but never actually accused her of it. I've instead come to understand that she's made many of these things so many times that she doesn't actually look at a recipe anymore, so when she tries to write it out for me something's bound to get left out, and when she says "add water until it's the right consistency" she knows what the right consistency is, while I think, "Syrup? Soup? Pudding? Concrete?" and wander horribly astray.

Like I said, we've gotten better at this whole thing, and I am now capable of following a Mom recipe from start to finish with some degree of success.

Mom's Banana Bread

1 cup very ripe bananas (mashed)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda (NOT baking powder)
1/2 cup oil
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1) Preheat the oven to 350 F. I did not take a picture of this step. If you don't know what an oven looks like or how to preheat it, you should stop trying to make Mom's banana bread right now and just go buy some.

2) Mise en place: This part is implied in the ingredient list, not written in the actual recipe. I turned the oven on, got out all of the ingredients and the things that I would need to measure them, then got to work on mashing the bananas. 1 cup of mashed ripe bananas works out to be about two really, really ripe bananas:



When you mash them, the consistency of the pulp is almost like pudding:



After the bananas I decided that even though the bag said that the walnut pieces were chopped that they were still too big and I wanted them smaller, so I measured them out and then chopped them up even smaller:



Mise en place ready, I moved on.

3) Butter sides and bottom of loaf pan. Lightly dust with flour, shaking out excess. OK, I've never buttered a pan before. I was unsure of how to do this, and thought about just spraying it, but the recipe said butter so I ended up unwrapping a stick of butter and coloring in the inside of the pan like I was using a crayon. After that I floured and shook out the excess over the sink:



4) Mix sugar, oil, and egg until creamy and light yellow in color. I know that Ina Garten always says to break eggs into a seperate bowl in case you get a bad egg, but I never seem to get bad eggs so I always ignore this, and since I use a lot of eggs on a regular basis I always crack them right into my bowl because I'm so good at it and I never make mistakes and what does a professional chef know that I don't know and... and...



God damn it. There are eggshell pieces in my egg. Like any trained, highly professional chef would, I fished out the eggshell pieces one at a time with tweezers and then continued with step four.

5) Blend in bananas, add nuts, and stir.

6) Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Break up lumps and stir until smooth and all flour is mixed in well. See? This is what I meant about Mom getting better at offering descriptions. Up in step four she added a color, and now she's made sure I understand that it should be smooth and free of lumps. Thanks, Mom.

7) Spoon into loaf pan. I cheated on this step by mixing the batter in a bowl with a spout and handle. When it was all mixed up, all I had to do was pour and then scrape down the sides:



This looks exactly like it looked when I was little and Mom made this. What's odd is that I'm pretty sure I didn't like banana bread when I was little, but I love bananas now.

8) Bake one hour or until top springs back and toothpick comes out clean. It should look like this:



9) Cool 15 minutes on rack, then dump loaf out of pan to continue cooling on rack. I don't have a rack, so I cooled it on top of the stove on a burner, which probably will not work if you have a glass-topped stove. Also, before dumping it out of the pan, I ran a knife all the way around the inside, just in case it was sticking a little.

Did I mention that it's delicious?



I ate it for breakfast and lunch all last weekend, and as dessert after dinner.

the hunchbread of notre dame

Several of my friends have been on this homemade bread making kick for a couple weeks, in response to this book, which makes it seem very easy.

Apparently it's very easy for everyone but me. My friends keep producing show quality bread loaves. They're posting pictures of loaves that look like the fake ones food stylists use in photo pictorals of pastoral, rustic meals in the villas of Tuscany. When I page through the Dean and Deluca catalog and see sixty dollar "Toast and Jam" gift baskets that come with a loaf of bread, a jar of jelly, and require next day shipping, it might as well be my friends' bread in the baskets.

I, on the other hand, managed to produce a loaf that looks like it stabs other bread loaves on subway platforms, just to watch them die.

Let's figure out exactly how this happened.

First I got the book. Then I got the flour, salt, and yeast. All that was left was to get a six quart container that could be lidded but not airtight, for keeping bread dough. Sara said she got hers at "Bed, Bath, and Beyond" and posted a picture, so I went to the same store to get one of my own. Unfortunately the containers were not measured in quarts, but instead in cups. I know there are four quarts in a gallon, and I know that there are two cups in a pint, but the number of pints in a quart (which would give me the number of cups in a quart) was kind of hazy. Could be two. Could be four. Given the apparently arbitrary nature of the American system of weights and measures, it could be six or eight or ten, and of course none of the staff at the store could help me.

This is how I ended up with a 44 cup container when I needed a 24 cup container. The size of the container had no real affect on the freakish loaf that I produced, but the part where I can't mentally convert measurements will be important later.

Anyway, I measured out the flour:



Since you have to dump it all in at once, I figured I should measure it in advance. Even though I was carefully scooping and knife-leveling the top of my cup, somehow flour still ended up everywhere. I have no explanation for this other than demon magics, and feel that we should burn Goody Bird-feeding-neighbor-upstairs-who-keeps-throwing-bread-down-onto-my-porch-from-her-balcony at the stake at once for bedevilment of my flour cannister. My certainty in this has absolutely nothing to do with my continuous irritation toward her.

My friend Huge suggested sifting the salt in with the flour, and this seemed like a wise plan. The only problem was that the recipe requires one and a half tablespoons of kosher salt, and my measuring spoons only come in table, tea, half tea, and quarter tea. There is no half tablespoon in my set. Remembering the measuring disaster from the container shopping, I consulted the table of measurements in the back of my 1949 Better Homes and Gardens cookbook:



There are three teaspoons in a tablespoon. My inner monologue exploded.

"Three? THREE? How the hell does that make sense? Everything else works in a multiple of two. Two cups in a pint, two pints in a quart, four quarts in a gallon, but all of a sudden we get down to teaspoon level and it's THREE? Who the hell thought up this stupid system of measuring? How am I supposed to figure out how many teaspoons are in a half tablespoon? What is that? A sixth? Two thirds? I DON'T HAVE A SPOON FOR THAT."

I decided that the wisest course would be to just eyeball when the tablespoon looked half full, and measured out the salt. Pioneer women made bread with just a pinch and a gut feeling, right? I have a gut. I have feelings. This would be fine.

I mixed the yeast into the hot water:



I mixed the flour and salt into the yeast water:



I covered, but did not seal, my dough and let it rise until it doubled:



Everything seemed to be going fine, and I was ready to tear off a piece and shape my loaf. I looked at the book, I watched the youtube video, and I was certain I could handle this. I laid out my parchment paper, lightly floured the top of the dough, and reached in.

Bread dough is sticky like you would not believe. My solution was to flour my hands, too, so that it would stop sticking to them, with predictable results:



Flour everywhere. It was like the flour factory exploded on my counters, but I finally got the loaf shaped. After preheating the oven, I attempted to slash it for baking, but somehow did not use enough flour. Hard to believe, I know, but the knife stuck to the bread and my slashes were sloppy and imprecise. This means, of course, that my bread did not turn out very pretty:



My bread is a failure. It's ugly and malformed. It should be hidden away somewhere, so that other bread won't have nightmares. Even worse, it's dense, not light and airy:



Guess why?

Too much salt.

Stupid tablespoons.