Of Frankenstein and Baking ...

As I declared not that long ago here, I have started to work on the third (and concluding) volume of my YA trilogy--The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein. (The first two volumes I published via Kindle Direct--and they're available on Amazon.)

It's taken a bit to get back into it. It's been nearly five years since I published the second volume, so I had to re-read both volumes to get the details of the story back into my head. Right now--I've written, oh, ten or fifteen pages, and I've been plotting out the story on a calendar from 1996-97 (when the story happens) and working on a map of the small town where Vickie and her father move after the sad event that happened at Niagara Falls at the end of vol. 2. As soon as I have a solid enough start (and am a little more sure where I'm going with it all!), I'll start serializing here, several days a week--a technique I employed with the first two volumes. Nothing like serializing to keep you working!

But yesterday--talking with Joyce--I got another idea: a mini-memoir about my years of baking--maybe 50-100 pp. I thought I'd call it Baked--but probably won't (although it would no doubt attract some purchases from druggies?!!?).

Here are some ideas I thought of yesterday while the notion began swimming through the ever-thickening lake of my brain and memory.

• I would talk about the baking I grew up with--which wasn't a lot. Neither my maternal grandmother (near whom we lived most of my first twelve years) nor my mom did much baking. Pies now and then (Dad was a pie-a-holic of the first order). Cakes (mostly) from package mixes. But I don't recall that either of them ever baked loaves of bread. Sliced sandwich bread (via Wonder Bread and Bond Bread [in Enid, Okla.]) was readily (breadily?) available, so why bake? Grandma--and, later, my mom--baked holiday fruitcakes, a tradition I have continued (using Grandma's recipe, though she'd probably gotten it from a magazine--I just don't know). Mom also bought those cinnamon rolls and biscuits that came in a little pop-open container, ready to bake. She would also use Bisquick for biscuits and shortcake and other goodies.
• I began bread-baking not long after we got married in 1969. The principal reason? $$$ We were living close to the edge--a teacher's salary (I was making about $6K the year I got married) and her small stipend as a teaching assistant at Kent State as she began her Ph.D. program. For several years--maybe more than several--we saved not a single dime. A paycheck-to-paycheck life. If I hadn't been so deliriously happy (with her, with my job), I might have despaired.
• My mom had given us some old cookbooks when we married, and it was from them (Better Homes and Gardens and The Joy of Cooking) that I found the recipes I employed for quite a while. I used active dry powdered yeast--but soon switched to Red Star Fresh Yeast: I had better luck with it.

• My yeast-baking went on for quite a while--decades. I had some success, some failure, some joy, some anger. But I never quit. It just tasted so much better than Wonder Bread, you know?
• The big change came in the summer of 1986 when my son, 14 at the time, and I flew to Skagway, Alaska, to do a bit of research on The Call of the Wild (my new literary obsession) and on the Klondike Gold Rush, an event that had involved my great-grandfather, Addison Clark Dyer, who had headed into the North with tens of thousands of others in 1897. (We have his diary, and Steve and I found places where he had been--including his original claim near Dawson City, Yukon.)
• While we were in Skagway, I bought some dry sourdough starter (and a little recipe book), and that, my friends, changed my life. I've kept it alive since then, so this coming summer it will turn 33 years of age.
• I've been a sourdough baker ever since--as my Facebook friends know all too well.
• With that starter I bake bread, waffles, muffins, pancakes, biscuits, etc. And a holiday favorite for me: a Christmas tree-bread. (My mother used to bake one; mine is mostly different from hers, though.)
• I also do other kinds of baking (non-sourdough): scones (various flavors), baguettes, corn bread, Grandma's fruitcake, etc.

So, anyway, I thought it would be fun to revisit all of this--the travels, the failures, the things I've learned, the routines (sourdough is like having a pet: you can't ignore it; you must "exercise" it regularly). Maybe some recipes.

And I want to make sure this is clear: I am an amateur. I've never had a baking lesson or class. Trial and error. And so I'm still making discoveries that would probably make a professional baker sneer in derision. That's okay. I've done it the way I've wanted to--and Life affords you so few chances to do such things.

Anyway, I just might get going on this project, too. Frankenstein and baking. As I think about those two, they're not all that unrelated. Both a baker and Victor Frankenstein take dead things, add a spark of energy, bring them to life.

So ... I’m thinking I'll get going on these two projects.

Then again, I might just take a nap ...