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Here is the bread Wesley and I baked.  We took the photos in the light tent I built a while back.  He got so excited today. He kept coming to me and saying “Daddy come!  Look at the bread it got bigger!”  He was a little concerned when I divided it into two loaves and he saw that now the bread was smaller.  But he got over it when it started to rise again.

We were supposed to eat it with dinner tonight, but when I got back from my run I was too hot for having soup and bread.  So instead we headed to Amy’s and had ice cream for dinner.  Wesley was a little unsure about it: “Ice cream is not dinner”, but he got into it pretty quickly.  And easy going Jillian was into it from the start.

Even though we bombed out at Great Harvest we found some nice organic wheat and rye flours at Whole Foods for our natural leaven starter.  Wesley and I put it together last night.  He loves to help in the kitchen and he now knows what it means to tare the scale.  He likes to do it a little too often, but he is getting the idea.  He knows we always tare before we add new ingredients.  The heat in our house (we keep it at a chilly 78F) is causing the starter to bubble a little sooner than it should so I think we’ll have to stay on top of it.  I’ll post the instructions later once I know they work.

Tonight we were making a biga preferment for some bread we will bake tomorrow.  He was doing great with the measuring and is stirring.  He definitely takes after me though.  He just wants to eat the raw dough.  I think he’d eat it all if he could.  We were kneading the dough here is a little transcript:

Me: “push, push, push, fold, turn … push, push, push, fold, turn…”
Wesley starts to eat more of the dough.  Keep in mind we are talking about flour, water and yeast at this point.
Wesley: This is yummy dessert.
Wesley: This is yummy dough-ssert.  (looks at me with a big smile)

Yes he made his first pun!  Not a bad one either.  He seemed rather pleased with himself.  If I was opening a pastry shop I think I’d have my name.

I’m so glad he likes to make bread with me.  I hope he always does.  I’m almost reluctant to say, but I’m hoping that we can maintain the starter leaven he and I worked on yesterday.  Then we can make bread with it his whole childhood.  And we can remind him that he helped start this 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago.  I’m not big on giving material things, but giving something you worked on together, nurtured together that appeals to me.