When your bread dough feels "dead"

Our house has been sadly lacking in homemade bread for the last few weeks - everyone was just too busy dealing with the snow and cold. But today, Carl got out the flour and the bowls and got busy.

The bread had been rising for a while when he decided he needed to get out to the shop, so he asked me to finish it.

It seemed like it was taking too long to rise, which was odd. And then when I turned it out onto the rolling board, it acted like it was dead. I was wondering if the yeast had been old, but decided to just keep working it and see what happened.

At first it felt stiff and didn't even want to blend together - but as I kept kneading, it got softer and more pliable. It took about 10 minutes, but suddenly it came back to life and began acting like bread dough is supposed to act.

I remember an old logger giving me advice way back when I was a newlywed learning how to bake bread. He said "Knead it until when you punch it, it punches back."

I'm not sure today's bread actually punched back, but it did bounce back when I punched it!

The end result: Darned good bread!