By Pearce Hungate
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.—With many now under “shelter in place” orders or their own personal quarantines, UARK students are faced with another new concern: boredom. Unable to leave their homes for anything but essential travel, many are finding that they have no idea how to occupy their time as they work to flatten the curve.
That’s where Hogs at Home comes in. From self-care to home maintenance, Hogs at Home is meant to offer readers a chance to come out of the social distancing era in a few months as better, more-rounded individuals, or at least with their sanity intact.
In this Monday edition of Hogs at Home, we head into the kitchen for something that manages to hit all three points of the quarantine activity checklist: good for the body, good for the soul, and good to waste a lot of time. That’s right, we’re making bread.
Grocery stores area already picked over, and if you or someone you live with is older or immunocompromised, then you don’t want to be making that many trips out anyway. That’s why baking your own bread is a solid choice during the pandemic. What’s more, all the ingredients that one needs can be found in most pantries, and if you do need to run to the store for something, then it’s unlikely that they don’t have what you need. Bread might be gone from the shelves, but everything that makes bread will still be there.
Ingredients
- Sugar (one cup)
- Water (two cups, warm)
- Instant or Active Dry Yeast (one and a half tablespoons)
- Salt (one and a half tablespoons)
- Flour (five to six cups)
- Vegetable or Canola Oil (one quarter cup)
The only thing that you might lack in even a poorly-stocked pantry is the yeast, but yeast hasn’t suffered the same fate as toilet paper and disinfectant and shouldn’t be too hard to find at the local grocery store.
Add two cups of warm water to a mixing bowl, as well as a tablespoon of granulated sugar and one and a half tablespoons of yeast. Stir and let sit for five minutes as the yeast begins its magic. Once the yeast has begun to form a foam over the entire mixture, you can start on the next step.
You can then begin to add your salt, oil, flour, and the rest of your sugar to the bowl. Mix well using an electric mixer, a crank-powered mixer, or a standard hand whisk, depending on what you have and just how much time you want to waste.
For good texture, you’re going to have to knead the bread. Kneading the bread should take no more than ten minutes if done by hand. After kneading the dough, place it into an oiled bowl and cover it with plastic wrap or a clean towel. You must oil the bowl well so that the dough doesn’t stick. If you’re using plastic wrap instead of a towel, make sure to oil the inside of the plastic wrap as well if the dough is in danger of making contact with it as it rises.
Once in the bowl, the dough will start to rise. How long this takes depends on how warm your kitchen is and other factors, but will generally work out to be about an hour. Once your dough has doubled in size, you’re ready to start punching it.
Air pockets can develop as the dough rises, and these aren’t good for the consistency of the bread. Form the dough into a ball and then roll it out on your counter top until the ball is more oblong. Punch and shape the dough until you’re satisfied, and then place the dough into a greased bread pan. As with the bowl that we let the dough rise in, it’s important that the pan is well-greased, otherwise, the bread might stick as it bakes.
For your second rise, you need to heat the dough in a warm oven. The best way to do this is to turn your oven on for some time and then turn it off, giving it time to cool down some by the time you’re done punching the dough. The second rise will take about thirty minutes, and by then you’re almost to your last step.
Bake the bread at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown. Take the bread out and let it cool in the pan for about ten minutes before turning the bread out of the pan and letting it cool the rest of the way. If you leave the bread in the pan for too long, steam can cause the bread to turn soggy.
Cut your bread into slices with a bread knife. Warming up butter in the microwave and then spreading a light coating on your fresh bread can go a long way to improve its flavor.
And there you go! You’ve cooked bread on your own, and, what’s more, spent a few hours of quarantine time doing something productive, which is probably worth more than the bread itself.
You can tune in to Hogs at Home every Monday and Wednesday to find new ideas for how being trapped at home can be beneficial.