My King Arthur Flower
Here's to a kid who can outbake me any day.
I made another attempt at homemade bread last weekend, which doesn't sound significant unless you know the tragedy of my previous attempt:
This was two years ago. I still can’t look that bread machine in the eye.
I have no more talent for bread than I did back then. But I do have a kid who has attended King Arthur Baking Camp for two summers in a row.
Parents, send your kid to KAF camp at least once. This isn’t about them; it’s about you and your needs. You’ll send them into the baking classroom at noon and they emerge at 4:00 with a bag of fresh King Arthur-y goodness every day for four days straight. Cheese-stuffed dinner rolls. Fluffy breadsticks. Cookies for days. Buttery vanilla cakes so moist you can grab the crumbs with the back of a fork before you lick your plate clean. You need these baked goods in your life.
The dough mixed up fine, but started gluing itself to the counter as soon as I turned it onto “a lightly floured surface.” Not floured enough, apparently. I turned, frantic, to my younger daughter as dough goo dripped off my fingers.
“Get your sister. GET YOUR SISTER!” I cried.
My eldest trotted in a minute later, unfazed by the mess. She gently flicked her fingers against the edges of the dough to pull it off the counter, clearly mimicking a motion she’d learned elsewhere, because my solution would have been to throw the entire thing in the trash and sulk for the rest of the night.
“Needs more flour,” she said, in such commanding monotone that I almost replied YES, MADAM. She scooped a half cup of flour and sprinkled it over my oozing mound of dough-mud.
“Put the flour on your hands,” she said. “Then rub them together, and the extra dough on your hands comes right off.”
“Or we could just wash our hands, right?” I said.
“NO. The water makes a paste and you’ll never get it off.”
YES, MADAM.
She talked to herself as she kneaded. “Fold, push, turn,” she whispered. A minute later, she had a shapely bread-like lump with a springy surface (“the doorbell test") that she dropped into the loaf pan.
“You’re amazing!” I blurted. She laughed, shrugged and went back her Legos as if this wasn't the best thing that's ever happened in our house. But she really is:
I’ll say it again. Baking camp. You won’t regret it.