making bread

Not a bad Saturday morning's work, huh?

The only bread that is available here to buy is a baguette type long white loaf/stick of bread. (this is thanks to the French who were here when Africa was all colonized, also why we speak French here) There are boulangeries in town that pump out thousands of baguettes a day. Each piece costs 150 francs, or about 30 cents. We eat plenty of those, often a half a baguette each for breakfast or as bread with salad for dinner. But after eating only one kind of bread, and white bread at that, for months on end, it gets pretty old. So I have taken to baking my own bread. I had never baked a single loaf of bread in my former life living in the states. There are a lot of things that I've learned to do here, especially in the kitchen without all of the modern conveniences that I had so taken for granted in the states.

In the photo are 3 loaves of simple "artisan" bread and BAGELS! It was my first try at bagels, but they turned out really well and were devoured very quickly. To make bagels you boil dough that you put into bagel shapes and then put them on pans and bake in the oven. My directions said to put the bagels one at a time in boiling water and once they floated they had boiled long enough. But they all floated immediately when I put them in the boiling water, so I just left them in there for awhile... I sort of guessed, and then took them out and baked them and they turned out great.
Sometimes I make bread with millet or ground wheat or oatmeal or some combination of those. It isn't really hard to make bread, but if I put interesting ingredients in it, it can be a lot of work. To put in millet or ground wheat I have to go to market and find these unground. Then I take them home and wash the grains, and wash and wash the grains again. (my first try left me with crunchy sandy bread and I don't want that to happen again) Then the grains are spread on a cloth to dry in the sun. Then I take them to the mill to be ground. Even white flour has to be sifted for bugs before I can use it. So it is all quite a lot more work than just buying bread, but it is so nice to have something different. And the aroma of baking bread in the house and then eating some still-hot-fresh-baked-bread that I made is amazing and definately worth it.