Reduce Stress:Turn Off the Phone and Make Bread!

There are many articles about reducing stress. Hopefully this one will be the easiest and cheapest to follow . Reducing the number of distrations helps to quiet the mind. If the radio is off, and the phone is off you should have a few hours of quiet
to relax in. Everybody has a cookbook somewhere. Check yours for bread recipes. I have an old Betty Crocker cookbook and even though I've been making bread since I was twelve, it has the best recipe for plain white bread. Try to start with plain white and when you are accustomed to working with yeast feel free to move on to rye, whole wheat, sweet rolls and sourdoughs.
For your first stress reducing session you will need yeast. Buy the dry kind but not instant, we are in no hurry here, remember relaxing is the key. This is recreational cooking we"re doing here. Next flour, sugar, and salt are basic. For liquid, recipes with milk will produce a soft bread with a lovely,brown crust. Recipes with eggs,butter, and milk will produce very rich,soft breadsthat make great toast. Italian breads have water,flour, yeast and salt. They are brushed with salt water before baking or with egg white -this produces a very hard crust.

The basics of bread are simple. Start the yeast in warm not hot water. Gradually add flour and whatever liquids ,sugars and eggs the recipe asks for. Stir until it forms a mass. Now the fun begins . Flour a board,or countertop and dump out he dough. It is time to knead the dough. this consists of pushing down hard on it while pushing it away. Pull it back, give it a quarter turn, push down,push away. Push very hard . You are not going to hurt it. This is where the stress goes. Right into the dough. You will need to push and pull ,pound and slam the dough for ten minutes. Visualize each slam,each punch as somthing in your life you need to get rid of: insults,anger, envy,revenge. Pound them all into the dough. The more you pound the better the bread and the more relaxed you will be. Honest!