Edna

Forgive me dear readers, for I have been out of town. I am sure you wait patiently each week for my exciting new post, but alas, I had to run away for the weekend. But before I left I had the joy of attending my bread baking midterm. Or, in other words, The Thursday Massacre. Oh, I had such high hopes. I had gotten an 11 out of 20 on my quiz. Actually a fairly decent grade for one of these quizzes. My extra credit answer saved my grade from being a 50% to a much higher 55%. I was baking bread with confidence. I was working my baker's math with precision. Baker's math is a complicated seeming way of figuring out how much of everything you need to get a one pound loaf or ten loaves or whatever the baker needs according to the baker's percentage. Simply put, the flour always equals 100%. So, you got it, the formula may be a total of 312% or 249%. Confused? Yeah, me too. But not so much any more. I aced my baker's math test. I was confident. Flying high.

We were told to produce 6, 12 ounce baguettes. I whipped out my pencil. I did some quick calculations. I am a superstar. Looking around the room I'm feeling even more confident. It seemed everyone was working with 5 pounds of flour. It sure seemed like a lot though. I mean a lot. When it was fermenting it grew to even more. It was really getting big. I was sure I could feed most of Whole Foods with the amount of dough I'd made. I'm thinking at this point my math was off. Way off. But so was everyone else's! Surely the test must be flawed! Which in this chef's class is kind of like saying my computer must be broken. It couldn't possibly be operator error. It is ALWAYS operator error. I forged on anyway thinking that more was usually better but I was wrong. She just shook her head as she always does with me.

I formed my cute baguettes, I thought magnificently. She thought otherwise. I thought my bread was tasty. She thought it was tasteless. I thought my raisin bread was really well done. She said it was supposed to have really big holes. It was a massacre. I was not alone. There was blood on the walls after she got through with us. I am, though, a good slasher. I make nice slits in my bread. Everyone needs a little something to hang on to, I guess.

Do you know the movie "The Incredibles"? Disney, superheroes, red suits? Great movie. One of my favorites, I have to admit. Edna, the character who makes the super suits, dahling--is my teacher. She is a living, breathing, carbon copy of Edna. She is fantastic to watch. Especially now that I've put two and two together and gotten Edna. I couldn't figure out for the life of me who she reminded me of. I am not alone--someone from another class sculpted her out of marzipan. She is fabulous dahling!