Bread Buddies

Who: Kavin and Jeri
When: Evening
Where: Kavin's home

"Tell me again how I let you talk me into baking bread?" Kavin said. He looked pretty odd in jeans, shirtless with an apron around his middle, but he wanted the least mess possible while making the dough like Jeri had instructed. "I'm a guy. I'm a guy. I'm supposed to be a horrid cook. Why are you turning me into Martha Steward?" he teased.

"I'm not turning you into Martha Steward. Though I'm pretty sure that woman desperately needs to get laid." Jeri managed not to look offended. She wasn't shirtless, but she was wearing an apron. "We're making bread because it's almost violent and very fun, and then you'll have fresh bread to eat. Think about it. Fresh bread. It'll be delicious and you can show it off to your friends and proclaim yourself the greatest cook of all of them." Not that she thought people like Gabriel Winters had any kind of cooking skill, but if they did she doubted they'd make bread anyway. "And besides, this way if you ever end up being the last person on earth, you'll still have bread to eat. Go get three cups of warm - not hot - water and put a third of a cup of honey in it, and two of those packets of yeast." Jeri set a glass bowl on the counter.

Kavin let out a breath and did as she said, putting the water into the bowl first, then the honey, then the packets of yeast. "Alright..." he said. "Now... why does it matter if it's warm and not hot?" he asked. "And why do you put honey in the bread?"

"Because we don't want to kill the yeast. And I put honey in my bread because the honey gives the yeast something to feed on, and I don't have to add white sugar to it. This is the best recipe ever for bread. Trust me." She grinned at him. "Okay, the yeast has to sit for a bit until it basically looks like scum on the water; it'll smell really yeasty, too. About five-ish minutes. So you're going to want to measure out five cups of the white bread flour. You're going to mix that in once the yeast is done doing it's yeasting thing."

He eyed the mixture in the bowl and then looked up at Jeri again. "Alright..." he said. Making use of the five minutes, he measured out the five cups of flour into another bowl and waited. "You know... comparing yeast water to scum is kinda gross." he teased. "And you're gonna want me to eat that?"

Jerilyn gave Kavin a smug look and pointed at the bowl, where the yeast definitely now looked like tan pond scum - at least in her opinion. "Doesn't that look appetizing to you, darling? Okay, add the flour, and stir it around until it's goop."

Kavin stirred in the flour like she'd as directed until it was a sticky blob in the bottom of the bowl. "Is it supposed to look like that?" Kavin asked, brow arched questioningly. "I don't see how that turns into bread."

"It's not food yet." Jeri said reassuringly, and she put a dishcloth over it. "Come on, let's go hang out for a half hour. You'll be surprised and pleased in around that time." She promised, slipping her arm around his waist with a grin.

He pulled the strings of the apron free and dropped it on the counter. "Yeah. We'll see." he said, surprised that he'd kept from getting too messy. There was a bit of flour on his chest and he brushed it away with the back of his hand. He led her to the living room and plopped himself down on the couch.

Jeri, still clean because she was making him do all the work, didn't bother taking off her apron and followed him. He plopped down, and she slid onto his lap, straddling him, and she pressed her forehead against his. She was grinning. "Don't believe in my dough, m'dear?"

Kavin let his fingertips rest against her hips as he shrugged just a bit. "Maybe. Maybe not." he said. "Don't see how that gloop is going to turn into bread is all." He definitely was a bit skeptical of the ability for that concoction to form anything that tasted even halfway decent.

"Awuh, you're breaking my heart, Kavin! Just breaking it! Tell you what. If it doesn't turn out - and you're not allowed to sabotage it so that it doesn't - you can ravish my innocence." She blinked at him and fluttered her eyelashes, just to prove how 'innocent' she was.

"Innocence." he scoffed. "You're the least innocent person I know." he teased, sliding his fingertips up a bit more and letting them dip beneath her shirt to rest against the flesh of her sides. "I say you'd let me ravish you whether the bread turns out or not."

"Well, I never said I wouldn't." Jeri laughed, and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "But, believe me, that goo will turn into bread eventually."

He smiled at that and shrugged. "Maybe." he said. "Probably. Well, maybe not. If I'm the one making it, it'll probably suck just to spite me." Kavin teased.

"Okay, okay. Maybe. But ask yourself this - you're a hunter. Are you really going to let unintelligent fungus and ground up wheat defeat you?" She raised an eyebrow at him, trying not to laugh.

"You're such a goofball." he muttered, rolling his eyes. "It's not my fault I'm not a cook. Figures I'd end up with one." He and Jeri were definitely opposites. Maybe it was true that opposites attracted.

"Look, lazy." She tickled his sides lightly. "What if some time in the future I'm out for a con and your mom assumes that I'm cooking for you and the phone line goes out so you can't order pizza and none of the restaurants will let you inside? You'll have to cook for yourself. So you might as well learn how."

He couldn't help but laugh at that. "I doubt that the world hates me enough for all that to happen at once." he said. "But at least I can stuff myself on bread if the apocalypse does come."

"That's the spirit!" Jeri encouraged. "Hurray for bread! And this is whole-wheat, too, so it has something resembling nutritional content."

"Yay for nutrition." he murmured, leaning in to press a little kiss against her lips. "You might just make me healthy after all. My mom's gonna love you."

"She already loves me for reasons beyond my comprehension." Jer pointed out, kissing him back. "She's just going to love me more for making you eat healthy because I have to eat healthy and the entire world needs to suffer with me."

"It's not really suffering." he admitted. "Whole wheat doesn't taste bad. As long as you don't start sticking me with your needley things then we'll be alright."

Jeri rolled her eyes with a grin. "Right, like I'd waste those on your non-diabetic ass. Those are mine - you can't have them." She leaned down and nipped his neck lightly. "Rawr. I'm a vampire."

"Mm..." he mumbled softly at that little nip. "A vampire huh? You know I hunt those." he whispered teasingly.

"After you're done the bread, you can hunt me down in bed." Jeri promised. "Until then, guess what? We need to finish it. Come on." She grinned and stood up, pulling his hand. "Time to play with the dough again."

He grumbled a bit, but followed her back to the kitchen. "This bread better be the most delicious bread ever to pass my lips." he muttered as they entered the kitchen again.

"It will be because you worked for it." Jeri patted his arm. "Okay, see how big and bubbly it is now? You want three tablespoons of melted butter, a tablespoon of salt, and another one-third of a cup of honey. You're also going to want two cups of whole wheat flour - you're going to need more, but this is the absolute minimum." She pointed to the various things. "Then you mix it all together."

Kavin followed along as she pointed, adding in the various ingredients into the bowl. Then he started mixing. "I feel like a girl." he muttered, mostly to himself.

The dough took on a much more dough-like consistency, and finally she took away the wooden spoon. "Okay, so get your hands in there and start kneading." Jeri demonstrated. "I'll keep adding flour until you get the right consistency. My little housewife, you."

"Don't call me that." Kavin said, starting to knead the dough. At least for a moment before he reached up and smeared some of the stuff on the tip of Jeri's nose. "I'll show you housewife." he chuckled.

Jeri smirked and added flour to the sticky stuff, and kept doing so until it became a proper sort of bread dough. Like playdough more than goo. So she dusted the countertop with flour and dumped the doughball there. "Keep kneading - feel your arms getting sore yet? It's a great workout."

Kavin continued to knead the dough. His arms did start to feel it after a couple of minutes. "Yeah, it does." he muttered as he pressed his hands into the dough.

"Wuss." Jeri smiled and wiped the bit of dough off her nose finally. "Trust me, you'll feel it real nice like a hundred and fifty times from now, and then you get to do it again later on. Twice."

"Why do I have to do it that many times?" Kavin queried, looking from the dough to Jeri. "What does it do? The kneading or whatever? Won't it work the same if I didn't knead it at all?"

"Oh, god no. You'll end up with bread that's more disgusting than hell Heavy and disgusting. See, wheat flour is mostly made up of... stuff, but when you moisten it and knead it and such it turns into gluten, which is... well, the bread part, really. The more you knead it, the stronger the bread is so it doesn't fall apart when baking it, right? And kneading forms these little pockets of air, which lets little pockets of carbon dioxide from the yeast form, letting the dough rise." Jeri told him, poking at the dough and tossing a little more flour on it for him to knead into.

"Ah." he said, though he only followed about half of that. He didn't want to ask her to repeat it so he just figured kneading = good. After a while, his hands started getting tired. "How do women deal with this stuff?" he questioned.

"Well, the vast majority in this country go to the store. Or they have bread machines." Jeri grinned, and gently pushed him aside so she could knead for a while. He looked like he could use a break, and Jeri didn't mind doing it. And she got right into it, too, doing the kneading like she'd been doing it for years - which she had. "And before that, it was, I guess, a necessary evil."

Kavin watched as she took his place and dove right into the bread making process. His eyes stayed on the dough for a while as he leaned against the counter. "So what do you do with it once you're done beating it to death?" he questioned.

"You need to grease a bowl, turn it around in the bowl so that it gets greased up, and leave it sit for like a half hour, hour, until it doubles in size. Seriously, it will double. Then you punch it down, which is exactly what it sounds like, knead it again, and put it back in the bowl. Let it rise again, punch it down, and this will make about three loaves." Jeri nodded. "Or two loaves and a tray of dinner rolls. Your call."

He nodded. "So you've gotta like hit it, let it rise, beat it down and let it rise again?" he asked. "Why do you have to do that more than once?" It was a bit confusing to him. Apparently bread making was a fine art and a long process. He was half tempted to just go to the store to get bread.

"Because the more you abuse the dough, the more it fears you and becomes better bread through that fear." Jeri teased.

"You're a dork." Kavin told her, shaking his head as he grabbed the bowl they'd used for the mixing and washed it out. After drying it, he set it back down again and poured a bit of oil into it, doing like she said and turning the bowl so the whole thing got grease on it. Surprisingly, he managed to not get it all over the floor. Once that was done, he set the bowl down once more and looked at her. "Alright. Bowl is greased and stuff, now what?"

Jeri just dumped the dough in it, flipped it over so it was completely covered in a light sheen of oil, and put a dishcloth over the entire thing. "Now we wait for forever."

Kavin blinked. "We just wait?" he asked, moving to the sink to wash his hands and then grabbing a towel and drying them off. "Well that's boring." he muttered. "We should fill up that wait time with something else." he offered. "Like... beating my girlfriend for making me cook bread." he mused, dropping the towel and hoisting Jeri over his shoulder. He gave her a few playful little whacks on her backside as he carried her towards the couch again.

"My purity!" Jeri gasped, trying very hard not to laugh and failing utterly. "And it's 'baking' bread, not 'cooking' bread, and you haven't even gotten to cook or bake anything except melting the butter. So there." And with that, she pinched his rear end in retaliation.

"Ouch!" he cried out, pinching her butt in response. He set her down on the sofa and plopped himself down beside her, reaching up to brush her hair behind her ear as he leaned in and kissed her. It was a soft little kiss. He couldn't help but steal it, even if they had been play fighting. She just looked so cute all flushed and giggling.

"I know how we could spend the next while being completely unproductive and totally like teenagers." Jeri gave him a smug, feminine look, and a definite smooch on the mouth.

"Mmm..." he practically purred against her lips as he leaned her back just a bit on the couch. "I think I like the sound of non-productiveness."

Jeri grinned and let him lean her back, sliding her hands up his back lazily. "Really now? So let's be terribly non-productive."

He smiled at her, nudging her chin up enough that he could kiss her throat, lightly sucking and biting at the flesh in between those little kisses. "Yes..." he murmured. "Let's."