The Baking Bug

Leave me home alone long enough and I will just start baking anything and everything.

Ok, wait. That sounds bad. I’m not saying I start putting random things in the oven. I’m saying I start making an overabundance of random food.

This time, it even extended beyond baked goods to cold foods as I made way too much “salsa” (sans peppers which I didn’t know were already moldy).

All together I have made a loaf of banana bread (in July), two loaves of honey wheat bread, about a gallon of salsa (may be slightly exaggerated, but only slightly), and 48 zucchini muffins in the month of August. And there’s still a week to go.

I Rainbowed Bread

Sunday I decided to make bread. I made this decision around 1pm, went to the store, then came home and laid down until around 6pm. Which left me finishing the bread about 10:30pm. Because I’m good at planning like that. Oh well.

Anyway, I used this white sandwich bread recipe from Julia Child which created two loaves of bread. I only rainbowed the one because getting this:

took about thirty minutes and was only one loaf. Next time I will split the whole thing into seven and dye it before splitting for the two loaves.

Another thing I learned doing this is that, while the glass storage container is roughly the same size as the bread tin and is oven safe, it doesn’t exactly let go of the bread very easily. Even with cooking spray. So I’ll probably be better off just getting a second bread tin like I contemplated at the grocery store.

Overall, the rainbowing process was really simple. After the first rise, I added food coloring to the dough by making a little dimple in the ball and dropping the food coloring in before kneading it with my fingers. It does get a little messy, so I would lay down a cutting board or maybe even parchment paper, and possibly consider gloves. The food coloring will wash off, but it will take a few washings. I’m just saying, if you make this bread in the middle of the day and are planning to go places afterward, probably best to protect your hands.