I'm afraid of a few things. Number one on my list is my fear of lightning. During a rainstorm, I prefer to get into bed, pull the covers over my head and hide until the storm passes. It's childish, I know, but it's my fear and I accept it.
My next fear is completely irrational (unlike the former). I call it, Saccharomyces cerevisiaephobia....the fear of yeast. To be fair, I'm not afraid of yeast per se; I'm afraid of working with it.
When I was a teenager, I managed to make a number of fine, raisin challahs at summer camp with my friends. I have fond memories of spending the day with my buddies, working with the dough until it was perfect. After the challahs were kneaded, we decided to disperse and go take our showers while we waited for the last rising. Lucky for us, we covered the beasts before we left. When we came back, we realized that some squirrels had decided to tiptoe over our masterpiece. Brilliant teens that we were, we figured that the heat of the oven would kill any possible bacteria. Whatever we did must have been brilliant. We received rave reviews. The challahs disappeared, and we bakers shared knowing glances and chuckles for the remainder of camp.
My luck at baking with yeast was never to be repeated (Divine retribution?). In the years following, I seemed to strike out at any attempt to make a challah. After three or four tries at most (more than 20 years ago), I decided that yeast and I were simply not friends. Gradually over time, I became downtrodden. I developed a growing fear that I could never produce anything made with yeast. It haunted and taunted me. In truth, I longed to conquer that same fear, especially when I realized that my errors had nothing to do with the yeast, but had everything to do with my (mis)timing of adding raisins to the mixture.
Enter my new mother-in-law, Queen of the Zemel.
Zemel is a Yiddish word for 'roll'. MIL's zemels are cinnamon rolls, light, sweet, delicious and a staple of New Hubby's diet. Not long after we met, MIL offered to teach me how to make them. All of a sudden I was frozen. What do I do? Do I decline the offer or do I face my fear?
It was a Sunday. MIL showed up to the house, ritually bearing the requisite vessel needed to make zemels. On her head, she wore a shmatte, because, she explained, that's what her bubbe did (there's a joke about brisket that fits in nicely here, but I digress). Before I knew it, we were getting down to business.
As I gave the recipe a first glance, I noticed one thing--the ingredients were listed, but the directions were conspicuously absent. According to my MIL, instructions, along with the ingredients were redundant; after all, she knew the recipe off by heart, so who needed them! This is no surprise to me. My grandmother worked the same way, as do I to a certain extent. It was all about cooking by 'feel', or in this case by 'sight'. The cinnamon/sugar mixture had to be a certain colour to be considered correct. and the zemels had to rise to a certain, invisible line in the magic bowl. It became evident that baking zemels was a science, and my MIL had, over decades, had turned it into a fine art. I obviously had a lot to learn.
In what seemed like no time flat, the dough had been mixed, risen and formed into buns. Before I knew it, the smell of cinammon and bready goodness was wafting through my kitchen. Those little devils had risen to perfection and were now baked to golden brown perfection. In the end, the taste test proved it. I knew that with the help of my MIL, I had conquered my fear.
Saccharomyces cerevisiaephobia be damned! With the help of Daughter #2 and brand new Step Daughter, we made magic in the kitchen the other day, baking beautiful zemels. Most of them are gone now, the true mark of a successful baking adventure.
So buoyed by my success, I am now on to the next hurdle. Next week, I shall endeavour to tackle my next food item avoided since childhood...beets. Stay tuned as this little girl decides to finally grow up!
And still to come will be my attempt at making that raisin challah. New Hubby must have faith in me. He bought me a bread maker for Chanukkah.
I just won't use it during a lightning storm!
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