The Granule of Civilization

History

Many moons ago, in the time before Sigourney Weaver, humanity was on edge.  They had realized, through thousands of years of experimentation, that they could grow wheat.  Despite all of this, they were unsure of what to do with the wheat.  They had silos upon silos of wheat with no use (as whales and sharks had not yet been domesticated), and these great, ominous entities didn't even pay taxes despite the profound effect they had on ancient human politics.  Little did they know, however, the Great Wheat Age was about to unfold before their very eyes.

It was around the time that Jupiter ate its once closest moon that a scientist named Abraham Lincoln decided to devote his entire life to the study of wheat and the resulting forms of government.  It came to pass that as he ascended to the ripe old age of twelve, he ground the wheat into a powder, and then combined the powder with water.  Then he placed it into a toaster oven, and the first bread was made.  He was later made famous for his dissertations on primitive oligarchies and because he made a cannon that repels primate feces.

That's the basic story of bread as we know it today: the ground powder of grains or cereal with a liquid (most commonly water, but other options are available such as milk, beer, etc.), potentially altered with things such as leavening agents (yeast, baking soda) to make it lighter and fluffier.  Beyond that it's mostly  just extras!  You can add fruits and spices and other flavorful things.

The Twist!


So I took the original pictures for this one a while ago, but they were rather lacking (as in I forgot a number of steps and felt like I'd be an ass if I didn't take more at some point).  So now we finally get to the integral method of making BREAD, finally, and because of the similarities in creation, I'll be showing you how to make pizza from (mostly) scratch, too!

Circumexcellence


So pizza turns out to be pretty cheap, all things considered, as everything makes at least two, unless you just really love cheese/sauce/pepperoni/your favorite topping.

So here's our list:

• Flour, unbleached all-purpose (for the bread I ended up making tonight I used wheat, but I have no idea how well this would work with pizza dough...I might try this next time)
• Salt
• Olive oil
• Sugar (unpictured, because I'm bad)
• Yeast
• Pizza sauce
• Probably mozzarella cheese
• Any toppings you want, baby

Kinda looks like soup.

The annoying thing about bread is exact measurements (or pretty close to, at least) are pretty important, so you can't wing it quite as easily.  Also, note that parenthesized measurements will be for bread, unparenthesized for pizza dough.  LET'S GET STARTED.

Modern art.

Take 1 1/3 cups warm water (2 cups) and a tablespoon of sugar (same with bread), dissolve into the water, and then add 1 1/2 tsp yeast (1 1/2 tbsp).  Let it proof (the term for...letting it sit) until it looks like a creamy foam kinda thing (right), and then start adding flour about a cup at a time.  None of the recipes I've ever used were right about how much flour you end up needing, so I've just started adding it one cup at a time until it gets where I need it.  At some point (no picture, my bad) when the dough has started to become like one object instead of a bunch of clumps in some liquid, you'll want to start kneading.  If you have a bowl as I do at right, you can knead in the bowl, but otherwise you'll have to countertop it.  All you really do is spread some flour on a surface, your hands and the dough, then start working the dough by pushing it out and folding it in half, adding flour when it gets sticky.  Doing it in the bowl is basically the same process.  Eventually you get something similar to the second picture, which does not stick at all to your hands, at which point you want to lightly oil a big bowl (I just use the same one I knead in, no consequences so far), turn the dough ball to coat, and cover it with plastic wrap, or a moist paper towel/cloth, or something like that.  Then you let rise until roughly doubled in bulk, which should take anywhere between half an hour to an hour and a half.  So what do I do while my bread rises?

Mah-fucking Skyward Sword, bitches.

One of these days I'll get a real hobby.  Probably the day before I die.

Look ma, no hands, OR sides!

BOOM, adorable.  And wheaty.

Best circle ever.

After an hour or so of valiant evil-vanquishing (evanquishing?  Sounds too much like evangelist), and just as my Wiimote was running out of battery, the dough had risen quite a bit.  The next step, though, is punching, and I was so excited to punch I forgot to take a picture.  It's fairly self-explanatory though - you just take the dough and punch it down.  Lots of fun, you can even get the kids in on it.  Sometimes I go hunt out a hobo and have him punch my dough and count it for community service.  With dough punched, the path now splits between just bread and pizza.  With bread, there's more rising - take however much you have, split into two, and put into two 9x5 loaf pans.  The pizza dough, though, you can just toss onto a pizza pan and start spreading, as below.  With the bread, let it rise another half hour or so, during which I just made some edits to the draft of this post I had before, and added some real directions.  With the pizza dough, though, you can just start topping, but you might want to preheat your oven to 475F (246C, for those non-Americans...which apparently exist reading this blog) before you do so you're not waiting for preheating after you have a topped pizza.  Once you've topped it and you have a preheated oven, stick it in for ten to twelve minutes, or until the crust is golden.  The bread dough, once risen, should be in at 350F (176C) for about half an hour.  

So, I don't have a receipt for any of the pizza stuff nor a decent estimate of the prices, so I'll hold off on cost analysis until my next trip to the grocery store, which should be this week unless I find a way to stop eating. Which I won't. Hope you've enjoyed this entry of Fruncoki, readers! Also, you should follow me on Twitter @ Fruncoki, now that I've remembered my password to it and will be able to post from it!