The first fear people have is that when presented with wonderful, homemade bread that they’ll go wild.  They’ll become bread-eating machines.  Who could have restraint when faced with the aroma of baking bread?

The second fear, oddly enough, is that they won’t eat the bread fast enough.  They’re afraid that the bread will go bad before it’s eaten.  Nobody wants to waste time or ingredients.

Let’s deal with these one at a time.

Fear One – I’ll go wild and eat way too much bread.

The fact is that you will go wild.  It will last for two or three loaves of bread.  Then you’ll get used to having homemade bread around the house.  In other words, the effect will wear off.

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still love the aroma of baking bread.  You’ll enjoy the taste.  You’ll scoff at store bought bread.  You’ll start looking at sandwiches in a whole new way.  You’ll branch out into making hamburger burns and rolls.   But you won’t feel the need to eat bread all day every day.

Fear Two – The bread will go bad before I can eat it all.

Not to worry.  Here’s what you do.  Once the bread is cooled slice the entire loaf at once.  Then put the sliced bread into a Ziplock bag and put the bag into your freezer.

Take the bread out as needed and put into the toaster.  Our toaster can thaw the bread and toast it with one round of toasting.  My parents need to run the bread through the toaster twice.  Either way, it works fine the the bread tastes great.

In talking with people I’m always surprised at how many people don’t have zesters.  They’ll use a potato peeler or a cheese grater and it’s not an easy process.

For those of you that haven’t seen one, on the left is a photo of a zester.  Do you see those metal loops at the top?  That’s the business end of the zester.  There are little blades inside the loops that make lovely slivers of zest.

The only problem is that once you’ve used one of these, there’s no going back.  Potato peelers are fine for potatoes.  Cheese grates are great for cheese.  But for orange and lemon rinds, you need a zester.

In the meantime I’ve been enjoying the free eBook, How to Bake, from The Prepared Pantry.  I really enjoyed the section in chapter three about baking bread on the grill.  Have I tried it?  Nope, but if I do you know that you’ll hear about it.

It was time for the oven thermometer!  These little gadgets are handy and inexpensive. If your oven doesn’t heat properly I suggest you get one.  It’s well worth the six dollar price.

I put the oven thermometer inside the oven and then turned it to 350 degrees.  The first thing I noticed was that the oven light went out at about 200 degrees.  Was the oven resting?  Did the heat need to equalize?  I’m not sure.  After half an hour, the oven stabilized.  It stabilized at 400 degrees!  No wonder our food had been burnt.

I played around with the oven for an hour or so.  I changed the temperature and noted how long it took the oven to make the switch.  I also observed how much the temperate inside the oven varried from what I’d set.

In the end I discovered that our “new” oven takes about half an hour to warm up.  It also heats to about 50 degrees higher than the temperature I set.  Knowing this gave me two benefits.

Benefit Number One – Armed with this knowledge, Mr. Diva and I went to our landlords and asked for a new stove.   They agreed!

Benefit Number Two – Now that I understand the oven’s quirks, I can work with it.  I warm up the oven well in advance of baking.  I also set the temperature fifty degrees cooler than what I really need.  Last weekend I baked two batches of hamburger buns and not one of them was burned.

While I’m very excited about getting the new stove, I’ll be able to deal with this one for now.

We’re unpacking, figuring out where everything is and where to put things in the new house.  It seems never ending.  But yesterday we passed a milestone.  Yesterday, for the first tine, I made bread in the new house.   As the scent of baking bread filled the air, the new house felt like home.

For dinner this week we’re planning lots of sandwiches.  I’ll run the bread machine in the morning when it’s cooler.  Then for dinner we’ll slice up the bread and have sandwiches and a salad for dinner.

Speaking of salads, my other blog Beetle Eyes has some great salad recipes that you might enjoy.

• Mom’s Shrimp Salad
• Black Bean and Corn Salad
• Three Bean Salad
• Cherry Delight – OK, this one is more a dessert salad. It’s very yummy and cooling. Heck, with temps this high it’s almost medicinal.

All of this made me wonder what Julia Child thought of bread machines.  Much to my surprise and delight, Julia thought bread machines were just fine.  You can click here to find videos of  Julia Child and Lora Brody happily using a bread machine.