I’m making my own bread. This is something that initially sounds quite impressive, like when someone tells you they’re learning Spanish or they’ve swallowed their chewing gum.
However, you shouldn’t be impressed that I’m making my own bread. No, seriously, tone it down. You’re embarrassing me.
Sure I make bread, but turn away now Jamie Oliver, it’s with the help of a packet bread mix and a breadmaker. Don’t worry, I’m well aware this is cheating. I told you not to be impressed.
Making bread in a breadmaker is ridiculously easy. It’s so simple a chimp could do it – nay, a chimp would be smart enough to see the process for what it is, realise it’s just adding an unnecessary middle man to the process of getting bread, and return to buying bread from the shops like everyone else.
I bought the breadmaker because I like to think I’m getting back to the old ways and being rustic.
Yes, I’m one of those 20-somethings who cling to buzz words such as organic, free range and Bieber. Apart from giving me something to talk about loudly in cafes in the hope of gaining some culinary cred, homemade bread is also part of my frugal living plan. I bought the breadmaker to save money; I should break even some time in my late 70s.
The breadmaker was an impulse buy. I went to the shops to get a blouse and left with a breadmaker.
Surprisingly, I don’t really eat bread. Like most Gen Y women, I’m petrified of carbs. I have a friend who once described eating pasta for dinner as “committing carb-icide”. She then told me that Oprah never eats carbs after noon and consumes no food at all after 6pm. I informed her that Oprah is a size 16. We decided that all hope was lost, and had a brownie each.
Like eating brownies, having a breadmaker allows me to feel more like Nigella Lawson. I probably could’ve achieved this feeling more cost-effectively by reciting a string of complicated adjectives when describing mashed potato.
Nigella Lawson is a heroine of mine. I have the greatest respect for her, mainly because she often closes her TV show by eating cold chicken directly from her fridge with her fingers, while still looking like Betty Page. Well, Betty Page in a terry towelling dressing-gown with chicken stains on it, to be precise.
Thanks to the breadmaker, I now have a fuller appreciation of the saying, “the best thing since sliced bread”. If you’ve never sliced bread, please try. It’s very tricky, like surgery or touch-typing. When I slice bread, the slices turn out thick, thin, thick, thin. They vary in size more than Kirstie Alley’s waistline.
Back to the breadmaker. It’s all in the name. It does what it says – it makes bread. It doesn’t make great bread or tasty bread, but it does make bread.
I think my dad said it best when he tasted my second attempt at homemade bread. “That’ll make good toast,” he said as he mimed having a broken jaw from chewing it.
Ending up as toast must be really upsetting for bread, like when meat ends up as Spam, or when your kids enrol to do an arts degree.
As originally published in The Courier Mail
Episode 12 of ‘The Minutes’ with Mel and Patience has dropped! In this episode we talk all things primary school; Mel buried a biscuit in the playground. Patience changed schools after cracking it at the principal. Mel worked at vacation care at a primary school, surprises can be scary for some kids. Both our Dad’s ran child safety seminars with us. Mel had a friend over in primary school; the grass was never the same. Patience went to a friend’s house and overheard the parents having a sex argument. Mrs Eyeball update. Barry Buttle had a fight on the streets of Melbourne. Special guest Kate Cooper from An Horse! Kate tells us a fight story and what it was like performing on Letterman.Seja Vogel from Regurgitator drops in for a surprise visit! Mel shows off her year 9 German. Download and subscribe iTunes Not iTunes
