Santa Lucia Dough: If You Mix It, It Will Rise

Second Grade parents must bake a lot. And just as soon as you think you've got it down, along comes a recipe of a different color (saffron, to be precise) to keep you in a healthy panic. It wasn't the saffron that caused any trouble. It was the fact that 6 tablespoons of yeast doesn't seem to want to foam in a pot of lukewarm butter and milk. At least two of us ran out for more ingredients to try again. But I -- at this point in the year being okay with flat buns and loathe to waste the gold that is called saffron threads -- went ahead anyway with the first batch. And lo, when I mixed it, the dough did rise. Like gangbusters. 


So the only point of this post is to let you know, in case you are using one of the recipes posted earlier to this blog, that even though it doesn't look like the heaps of yeast will do its job -- it will. 


Another tip from a second-grade mom (unrelated to bread): if your daughter happens to be Santa Lucia, may be a good idea to send her to school with wet hair...