Don’t let the heat out!!!!

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So my kids got me a new Kitchen aid mixer for Mother’s day this year. I was so excited. I have wanted one forever. I had all these plans on making bread from scratch. Now that I had the tools I could get down to business. So if anyone has made bread before you know there are some trick to this and it isn’t something that just goes as planned right from the beginning. It definitely takes practice. So I am going to share some of this craziness with you.

1. Mix the ingredient. So you have to do this in a order I found out. You can’t just throw it all together. You have to do the dry first then add the wet. Some of your ingredients will react if you just mix them in without being orderly.
2. Rest and Hydrate. I found out you can’t just start kneading without letting the mixture rest and hydrate. If you don’t do this your dough will not knead correctly and be dry and will not rise. We have to do this in our own lives as well. Most of us skip this process and we become hard and not pliable. Take the time we need to rest in our lives.
3. Kneading. So when you knead the dough you can’t just beat the heck out of it. This process is done so all of the ingredients are distributed evenly and so we can start the activation process but a lot of us just are way too hard on ourselves before we can start to rise. Be slow and intentional with ourselves. This process stretches us. It can sometimes be tedious and hard. But we need to be gentle with ourselves and kind during this process.
4. Proofing. This is where it gets tricky. This is the first process of rising. Yet, it takes just the right environment. If it’s too hot it will rise too quickly, if its too cold it will rise to slow. Both of those things can dry out the dough and make it hard. Also, it is important to cover your dough and protect it so the air doesn’t dry out the top and allow outside influences from corrupting the dough. Protect your life from outside impurities.
5. Shaping. So you remove the cover on this beautifully raised bowl of dough and what is the first thing you do. You punch it down again. This makes no sense as we took all that time to raise it. But if we don’t do this we can look all puffed up but the inside of the dough can be just a bunch of air. We need to feed the yeast again. Then we shape it into our loafs. This process can be painful. Yet, if we skip it our bread will just be nothing but a pretty looking loaf of air without any substance. I don’t want to be that. So Push me down and pound the air out of me.
6. Rising #2. So after we have been deflated and shaped it’s time to be built back up again. This time we will have the elasticity to hold our integrity during the baking process.
7. Scoring. This part has always been the part I didn’t understand until one day I felt like I had an aha moment. This is the part that makes us different. It makes us special. Also, after we have shaped it and allowed it to strengthen we also need to give it space to expand. Scoring it gives it the ability to grow.
8. Baking. This is the fun part but it also can be tricky as well. We need to keep the temperature hot enough to bake our bread all the way through but also it can’t be too hot that we bake to fast and dry out and get tough. As we smell the aroma of fresh baked bread it can be so very hard to resist opening the oven door. It is so important to not let the cool air creep in because sometimes if we do that it can deflate us. Stay in the heat until we are complete. Don’t come out too early. Only God knows when we are finished with the process. His timing is imperative.

LAMENTATIONS 3:25 SAYS…. The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for him, to those who seek for him.

God help us wait on your timing and know it may not look like ours but help us to trust in you for Your perfect plans.

Be Blessed, Renee’