How's the water?

I'd always heard that baking bread was a messy, difficult and time consuming process. Naturally I decided to try baking bread. I found a recipe for a very simple loaf of white bread. The recipe seemed disappointingly straightforward and easy. It called for flour, crisco, eggs, water, yeast and sugar. There were no exotic ingredients or tricky steps to master.

Fortunately the recipe included instructions for the yeast and even explained that the water must be hot enough to activate the yeast but not so hot that it killed the yeast. The temperature range that this recipe listed was 105 to 115 degrees. This seemed to be a very narrow temperature range, requiring something more precise than "touch the water and guess".

My mother never made candy nor did she actually bake very often, but I thought she had a thermometer that she used for roasts. I dug through the kitchen but couldn't find it. So I trotted down to the drug store and bought a thermometer.

Once I'd returned home, I examined the thermometer. It had been made to measure the temperature of people, therefore it's upper range wasn't much higher than 106. Ok...I didn't know what would happen if the water temperature was higher than the thermometer's range. I imagined that the glass would shatter and mercury would fly everywhere, which would be hard to explain to my mother.

Nervously, I turned on the hot water faucet and measured a cup of water. I cautiously stuck the thermometer into the water. The temperature rose to 106 and stopped. Relieved, I removed the thermometer, wiped it off and continued with the bread making process.

While the bread was rising, I took the thermometer and hid it in my bedroom. I didn't want the next sick person to use it and get it germy - after all I might want to make bread again in the future.

The bread turned out really well. It rose beautifully, made the house smell wonderful and tasted really yummy. Since this attempt was so successful, I made bread at other times. Eventually I became tired of using the thermometer and started just sticking a finger in the water. Although I can't say what the exact temperature of water is, I can determine whether or not the water will activate yeast.

Years later I told my mother this story. After she stopped laughing, she informed me that I should have bought a cooking thermometer.