Overall Enthusiasm

Last Tuesday evening I prepared to bake bread for the Wednesday gathering, and I discovered that I had not evenly divided the dough in half, and the half batch of dough remaining was much smaller than it should be. I baked the bread anyway, but the loaf was too small. I happened to weigh the first loaf, and it was 21 oz. The second loaf was only 11 oz. If I had divided the dough evenly, I would have had one pound loaves.

Anyway, this wouldn’t do. So I made another batch of dough, let it rise, and then refrigerated the dough. I had to get up very early Wednesday to prepare the loaf, bake the bread, and make sure it cooled for three hours before our lunch. I forgot to weigh the loaf, but this time when I divided the dough, I bisected the dough in bowl with a bread knife – so it definitely was evenly divided.

The dough was a little bit wetter/stickier than the previous batch, and I probably needed to let the loaf rise longer and bake longer. Instead, I used the same times I did for loaf #2, and loaf #3 didn’t rise as much as it should have in the oven. I guess it was OK, though, as my friends liked the bread very much.

The event was an annual gathering of old co-workers. Kris was my boss, who hired me, and Bill was my teammate. We were joined by Bill’s partner, Anita. We noted that I started at the company in 1986 – a little shy of 39 years ago. It’s sort of amazing that we’ve known each other for that long – and that we stay in contact. Kris was one of my favorite bosses, though, so I’d be sad if we didn’t stay in touch. Bill and Anita hosted a fine lunch in their home, and we all had a delightful conversation. I’m glad we were able to meet up.