I’ve had the recipe book open several times this past week, trying to work up the courage to actually bake the bread. To my chagrin, I found that I had all the ingredients on hand, so not even a grocery run was necessary. How convenient is that? I love to bake biscuits; I can do that with my eyes closed and they usually turn out pretty well. But yeast bread is another story. It’s not foolproof and too much can go wrong. Still, as I sorted out and measured, I was hopeful, as you just have to be when working with yeast. Life is short. Take chances.
The bread in question is focaccia bread, something that is readily available at Panera, which is probably what I should have considered before beginning this process. It looks like a really large pancake of crusty bread, sprinkled with rosemary and sea salt. It also looks like something that should accompany a sparkling glass of Riesling and artisan cheese, arranged on a tablecloth-covered table under a leafy arbor in an Italian vineyard. So I was duly intimidated, no matter how simple the recipe promised to be.
Any type of yeast bread scares me. My success rate is about 65%, but I’m far more aware of the failures than I am of the successes. I recently baked a very nice loaf of sandwich bread, though, so my confidence level was a bit better than usual. You just can’t begin a recipe that calls for yeast and hand kneading without a healthy dose of hope. No matter the track record, this time could be different.
I started early, shortly after sunup, mixing the yeast and warm water. I’ve found that If you begin a bread recipe early, you have a whole lot more confidence. Nothing in the day has gone wrong yet, so optimism is high. Surely starting at sort of first light would help. I followed directions to a T, timing all with a kitchen timer and adjusting oven temperature correctly, and even covering the dough with a fresh tea towel. I left nothing to chance.
And I hoped. Without hope, there’s really no need to try. I didn’t even open the oven door during the rising time for fear of deflating both the dough and my confidence level. It’s a bit like Christmas for a kid in that you know, or at least you hope, you’ll get what you want but you’re just never certain until that fateful moment when all is revealed.
Which happened about two hours later when I gingerly removed the tea towel.
I suppose the opposite of hope is disappointment. If you want something badly enough, it’s going to be one or the other. Absolutely. Hope is confident expectation while disappointment is the failure to meet a hope. Sort of the glass half full or half empty thing, except that there’s not much middle ground. An optimist hopes. A pessimist expects disappointment.
“You hoped me up.” That’s what my potential father-in-law whispered to me from his hospital bed several decades ago. There are moments in life that you remember forever, picturing the setting completely no matter how much time has passed, as if the details were preserved in a book to which you can return any time you like. That late afternoon at the UAB hospital, with the Birmingham skyscape visible through the single window of his hospital room, was one of those imprints.
He had been admitted for treatment of late stage bone cancer and there was little reason to expect that he would ever leave the hospital. Still, I stood beside his bed and encouraged him, telling him things even I didn’t believe. Like that he’d be home soon and that I was looking forward to his prize-winning—at least in my estimation—strawberries that next spring. Having not been privy to the dire prediction of his doctor, I could be much more optimistic than the situation warranted. In my 26-year-old mind, I’m sure I thought that maybe putting a timetable on his recovery would encourage him to make it til then. Mind over matter, you know. He nodded slightly, held my hand, and told me I had “hoped him up.” I‘m pretty sure he didn’t believe it in the least, but on that day he humored me by letting me think I had helped. Or maybe he actually felt a glimmer of hope just by hearing the words. Who knows.
“Hope springs eternal.”
“Hope is the last thing ever lost.” That one is an Italian proverb, probably formulated over a perfect loaf of focaccia bread in the vineyard.
The bottom line is that hope is powerful. Much more so than disappointment. If things don’t work out, you just make a plan and try it another way, until all is definitely lost and then there’s acceptance. But I really don’t like to go there too often, which is why making bread is such a gamble. I really hate accepting failure and that’s a very real possibility in bread making. Disappointment is just not fun. Winning is.
Whoever wrote Looney Tunes cartoons knew a lot about hope, and even more about persistence. Tom never wins but he’s ever hopeful. No matter how many times Jerry outsmarts him, no matter how many times he’s blown up or ripped to shreds or launched sky high, he’s always back for another day, devising another plan. And that Wile E Coyote guy REALLY never gives up on having a Road Runner snack. Dynamite is usually involved but it just never goes his way. Or maybe it does. But he just climbs out of the canyon, dusts himself off, thinks a bit harder, and calls Acme for some more dynamite. And he hopes for a different outcome next time.
Hope is not knowing but expecting. Maybe not with full confidence, but more than a little. That’s what I told myself as I peered into the mixing bowl to check on how high the bread had risen. This time—this time it would be perfect. I was prepared to accept defeat; the day was young. Yet there it was. High and puffy and completely filling the bowl, almost to overflowing. This was my day.
I doubt I’ll be on the British Baking Show any time soon, but I’m feeling pretty confident with that killer loaf of focaccia bread. Even Paul Hollywood would be impressed. Now if I only had a husband who appreciated it as much as I do. Instead, I’m sure he’ll admire it momentarily and then ask if I have ingredients for cornbread.
Well I certainly hope so.
