If Black Friday makes you want to clean up this city by shooting your fellow shoppers in the head, I recommend staying home and making yourself an edible homage to The Comedian instead. A dab of jam, a vicious bite, hurk, and maybe let it all out in your journal.
Watchmen Bread
Yellow Dough:
3 cups flour
¾ cup warm milk
½ cup water
1 tbsp yeast
2 eggs
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup sugar + 1 tsp
½ tsp salt
2 tsp banana extract
1 ½ tsp yellow food coloring
Black Dough:
3 cups flour
¾ cup warm milk
½ cup water
1 tbsp yeast
2 eggs
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup sugar + 1 tsp
½ tsp salt
2 tsp coconut extract
1 ½ tsp black food coloring
Mix the yellow dough first. Start by dissolving the yeast and 1 tsp of sugar into the warm water. Spend the next 10 minutes contemplating the filth and grime of the city as the yeast bubbles and froths like a mad dog.
Beat in the eggs, warm milk, melted butter, banana extract, and yellow food coloring. Once that’s a disgusting slurry, mix in the rest of the sugar. It should look like the sun is melting in your bowl.
Add the flour. Mix it well until you achieve a rough dough. If you have a stand mixer, set it to speed 2 and let the hook rip and tear into the dough for the next 6-8 minutes, cleansing it, transforming it. If not, knead it by hand for 8-10 minutes. Either way, you know you’re done when it becomes as smooth and elastic as the real face you wear over your worthless flesh. Cover it with a clean kitchen towel and set a timer for 60 minutes.
The yellow dough should be bright and sunny, but you’re a creature of night. It’s time to bring on the dusk.
Once more, mix the yeast, a teaspoon of sugar, and the warm water. Wait 10 minutes while it bubbles up like a pot of beans left on the burner too long. Quench that unnatural fire by beating in the eggs, milk, melted butter, coconut extract, and black food coloring. Add some sweetness to the murky night by dumping in the rest of the sugar.
Finish it off with the flour. Watch it transform – white turning to black like your mask. Mix and stretch and change and knead it until it become elastic and smooth, just like the yellow dough.
Cover it up and walk away.
Come back when the timer you set for the yellow dough rings. The yellow bread should be roughly double in size with the black not too far behind it.
Punch down the black dough. A single blow should do it.
Roll out two long cylinders of black dough, about an inch and a half wide by a foot long. These will be your smiley face’s eyes.
Roll out another rectangle of black dough for the mouth. It should be about four inches wide by about a foot long. Set it aside.
Now for the yellow dough. Roll out two rectangles just wide enough to loop each eye twice. Roll your black eyes in their doughy yellow sockets.
Put the yellow eye holes side by side, close and snug. Make sure the black centers line up.
Roll a new yellow cylinder, about as wide as your two eyes pressed together. This is the body of the face. Gently lay it on top of the eyes.
Carefully lay the mouth on top of that. You should now have an upside down smiley face with two black eyes, some blank yellow canvas, and a nice open parenthesis for a mouth.
Roll your remaining yellow dough into a wide rectangle. It should be twice as wide as the rest of the face. It’s alright if you have to roll it kind of thin. This layer just holds everything else together.
Oh so carefully wrap the wide yellow layer around your smiley face. You want this layer to be nice and snug. Feel free to stop and adjust if needed.
Now use your sharpest knife to cut off all the spare dough on either end. You want to see that smiley face shining through. Use your hands to squish and adjust the dough back into a sphere if it gets squished.
Now roll out the rest of your black dough. It should be at least half again the width of the smily face. Wrap it snugly around all your yellow dough, like it’s the outer skin of an onion. Pay attention to where the eyes are located. That’s the top of your loaf. Now tuck any overhanging black dough underneath the bottom of the loaf, so the finished product comes out of the oven looking as black as your soul.
Grease a large (2 pound) bread pan. Carefully lower in the dough, making sure you have the mouth pointing down the the eyes pointing up.
Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.
Let the loaf cool for at least 10 minutes after removing it from the oven. Cut away the black, crusty exterior to reveal the smiling face within.
Serve with a dab of cherry jam, the texture of clotted blood.