An uprising

Last week in preparation for a get together with friends and anticipating an upcoming house guest I mixed up a batch of Honor Carr's hot roll recipe.  I have been making yeast breads most of my married life.  Never was as good as I wanted it to be, that is it never tasted as good as Granny Chandler's rolls.  Granny passed away before I was able to get her to show me the tricks.

When we moved to Missouri a dear, sweet lady, Elsie Sponenberg, invited me to join an extension club with her.  That led to meeting Shirley Weatherly and her instructions on making yeast breads.  And the rest is history.  And for sure there have been good batches, mediocre batches, some that never rose and some that were so tasty they made Gene's eyes roll back in his head when he took that first bite.

It would not be an exaggeration to say hundreds, maybe a couple or three thousands of dozens of bread products have rolled out of my hands.  I like the smell of the dough as it is being mixed.  I like the feel of the different dough recipes as it is kneaded and shaped.  The smell when the dough is rising drifts through our home.  And the aroma when the dough is baking is surely what heaven will smell like!  And then there is the taste of the warm, buttered dinner roll as you take the first bite.  Mmmmm, simple pleasures.

The process all begins when a person mixes a little yeast with some warm water.  Usually I walk away to begin mixing the other ingredients and return to find the yeast alive and raring to go.  But this one morning for some reason I stayed working next to the yeast water mixture.  Then something caught my eye.  It started along one side and within a couple of seconds the entire water surface came alive.  This is the first time I saw the yeast bloom in the warm water at the bottom of the bowl.  Had I looked away as the many, many times before I would have missed this amazing sight, an uprising.