Rising Anxiety & Breaking Bread
This week's episode is the literal EASIEST bread ever. (And it's vegan!)
Recipe:
3 ½ cups flour
1 ¾ cups water
2 teaspoons salt
2 ¼ teaspoons yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
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In a large bowl combine your flour and salt.
In a separate bowl, combine your water and sugar (ensuring your water is a little warmer than room temp) add your yeast and whisk together with a fork.
Now, this where things get fun. I’m making this bread specifically for French toast so I’m adding nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, and a little lemon zest. If you wanted to add some herbs, spices, or dried nuts and fruits, this is the perfect recipe for it. Just add it in with your flour at this point. This recipe is VERY forgiving so you can eyeball most things.
Once you see the yeast is active (bubbles are forming, it’s beginning to grow in size), add it to the flour, OIL YOUR HANDS, and mix until combined. Then cover loosely with plastic wrap, and set it aside somewhere warm in the kitchen and out of the way for the next 12-24 hours.
(One sleep later) Spread a little bit of flour onto a work surface and turn your dough onto it. Before you begin to shape it, grab your bowl, a kitchen towel, and some flour. Put the towel in the bowl, leaving a space for the bread to rest after you’ve shaped it. LIBERALLY flour that towel and ensure it’s on the sides too. Shape it into a rough ball and place into the bowl with the towel. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rise for another 2 hours.
About thirty minutes before it’s done, preheat the oven to 450F and place your pot with the lid inside to pre heat too. Once thirty minutes has passed, take the pot and lid out of the oven, take the lid off the pot and grab your dough bowl. Take off the plastic wrap, and carefully drop the dough into the pot. Shake the pan once or twice if the dough looks uneven, but it’ll straighten out as it bakes.
Cover with the lid and place into the oven for 30 minutes. Remove the lid, and then bake for another 15-30 until it’s beautifully brown and golden. Place onto a rack to cool for another hour or two before devouring.
(A note: you don’t want to cut hot bread because it can cause it to deflate and to lose all the air that the resting allowed for!)
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Here's a video on Anxiety Disorders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX7jnVXXG5o&ab_channel=CrashCourse
Here's a website that explains more on anxiety: https://www.anxiety.org/what-is-anxiety
Baking-ish is a podcast produced and edited by Fahrenheit Co., a U.S. based entity run and organized by Ren Newman.
**I am not a mental health professional. Please talk to a healthcare professional before doing or changing anything within your daily life. These experiences and opinions reflect only my personal experiences.
