Bud Grossmann’s Words of the Week for the Week of May 20, 2012 Previously unpublished fiction. © 2012 by Bud Grossmann. All Rights Reserved.   Bread, 2012 © 2012 by Bud Grossmann GIVE US THIS RYE, OUR DAILY BREAD You asked several days ago, Debbie, but I keep forgetting to tell you about the bread baking session where my rye went awry. Late in the morning this past Sunday, when I had just begun to wash a week’s worth of dishes that had accumulated on my kitchen counter, I glanced at the clock on my stove, counted on my soapy fingers the hours till supper, and calculated that if I started at once I had time to make a loaf of rye in my bread maker, and would have time, immediately afterwards, to make the rye dough for a pizza that I planned to bake and take to Dad. I hastily measured the dry ingredients for two batches of my mix. I put the water and softened butter for the rye loaf into the baking pan in the bread machine and dumped in the proper jar of mix, switched the machine on, and returned to my dishwashing. Seven minutes into the kneading, I realized I had not put in an egg! I quickly beat an egg in a bowl and poured it onto the whirling ball of dough, but the egg just sloshed around. While the machine continued paddling, I gooshed the egg into the dough ball with a rubber spatula. But then I arrived at a new realization: the egg was supposed to be for the pizza dough! My regular rye recipe does not call for egg. I had been mistaken about being mistaken, but now, having made an unnecessary correction, I had committed a serious production error. Even after the egg seemed to be mixed in, the dough was way wetter than usual. It was sticking to the sides of the pan, so I threw in a heaping tablespoon of bread flour, which didn’t make much difference. I threw in a couple tablespoons more, but the ball of dough still looked gummy. At that point I stopped the machine and started the cycle over again. In a few minutes the dough was still looking overly slick and sloppy, but I gave up and figured, Let’s see what happens, maybe the moisture will bake off. And it did. When the buzzer announced the end of the baking, I needed to use a thin plastic spatula to persuade the loaf to release its grip on the pan and drop onto a cooling rack, but it arrived handsomely plump, with a dark, glossy crust. When it had cooled, I sliced it and found the interior light and delicious. I judged it superior to my regular rye. A critical reader, if disappointed by the anticlimactic outcome in this narrative, may nevertheless, with a little effort, discover luxuriant metaphorical applications. ♦         ARCHIVES         Click for a list of other Words of the Week I would welcome your thoughts on this page (or any of my others).  Write to me at the following address.  Please be sure to spell Grossmann with two n’s and mention what page you are writing about. Thanks!  BUD GROSSMANN Top of this page | HOME | Fine Photography | Picture of the Day | Writings | | Words of the Week | Mom & Pop Prop. Mgt. | FAQ |

This page was updated Sun, May 20, 2012, 12:02AM CDT.