Dough! Breadmaking is easy

The other breads require yeast, a completely unknown quantity. Most of us have never worked with it, so instructor Christopher Green gives us an overview of what it is and how it works.

Before you start cooking it, he says, you have to proof it, that is, make sure it is alive and active. My curiosity is piqued. How do you do that? Poke it? Shout at it?

Nothing so dramatic, unfortunately. Instead, you dissolve it in warm water with sugar. If the water becomes frothy, the yeast is active. Make sure the water is warm but not more than 120 degrees, he warns, or the yeast will die. I note this, not wanting to be an inadvertent accessory to yeasticide.

When we reach the soda bread recipe, Green tells us that whoever makes the bread will also make the butter that accompanies it, churning cream until the fat coagulates and turns into butter. It's Little House in the Big Kitchen tonight, and I want to be a part of it. I have always felt an affinity toward Laura Ingalls Wilder, and now is my chance to be like her. But another student has already volunteered to do the soda bread, so I turn to a different recipe.

I end up volunteering to make the buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy, because I am not entirely happy without something fatty or greasy accompanying my food. In fact, everything I have cooked since this class started has involved some permutation of cheese or bacon. And when I look over my notes for all the other classes, I see that I have managed to avoid almost every healthful dish we've prepared.

My repertoire, then, consists of tasty but artery-clogging dishes. I realize I may have to make Lipitor a side dish at my upcoming soiree.

My cooking partner tonight is Bob Walters. Our mission: to juggle the baking of biscuits and the preparation of gravy without scorching or burning anything. Walters and I are cooking literalists - neither of us is confident enough to assume that anything is correct. And even after nine weeks of classes, I still need constant validation throughout the cooking process. Consequently, we spend much of our time hailing the chef, to assure us that everything is going well.

And it is. This is one of the easiest evenings thus far. I tell myself it's because I have grown as a cook, but actually it's just a really easy recipe.

It's especially easy compared with last week's shellfish fiasco. This week I have a partner, I'm not 20 minutes behind the rest of my classmates and I am covered in a light sprinkling of flour instead of mussel beards.

Best of all, the smell of baking bread has permeated the kitchen.

Most of the breads are finished quickly, and it's not long before I have a smorgasbord before me, half a dozen plates with naan, tortillas, soda bread, dinner rolls and pizza. It's not quite paradise, but when I ladle sausage gravy onto the biscuits, it comes pretty close.

Buttermilk biscuits are even better when slathered with sausage gravy. featured

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