There is nothing like a cold and rainy night to make you take up baking again. I could hear the TV from somewhere in the house; some reporter was announcing that the latest typhoon had made landfall. And I thought, With any luck, I will have found Lola Nena’s mixing bowl before Marce gets here. I hate it when Ma returns things to the pantry — they’re never where they are supposed to be.
Thirty minutes later, I was beset by another vexation: I had batter instead of dough. I checked my notes, confirmed that I had the ingredient amounts right. To be certain, I checked Delish’s Parker House rolls recipe, and sure enough, it called for 3.5 cups flour and 1.5 cups liquid. I scrolled down to see what other readers had to say, but there was no comment section.
Some things you can stop in the middle of and put off for tomorrow. Dough is not one of them. In the end, I had to add just over 1.5 cups of flour to get a workable mixture. Meanwhile the rain had stopped and I was beginning to sweat (my mixer broke down earlier this year, around the time that the neighborhood repairman suffered a debilitating stroke, so I now knead by hand). Leaving the dough to prove, I was suddenly conscious of the silence: no wind, rain, or sound of traffic. The air was crisp and clean and still, and in that rarefied moment, all seemed right with the world.
I hope, therefore I bake. This time I prayed that the additional flour would not result in flat-tasting bread. It did not. But I did bake it ten minutes too long — my fault, not the recipe’s. The Parmesan topping was toasted; I had to top the rolls anew.
Typhoon Marce never came our way. The morning after brought sunshine and color and noise. The bread was partaken of and then forgotten. All in all, just another ordinary day.
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