• Brown Bread

    June 27, 2008

    This is my catch-all bread recipe. I like to clean out my fridge and cupboard, adding the lumpy cream of wheat from last week’s breakfast, maybe the dregs of the molasses jar, the last bit of cornmeal from the bag, or, ooh—those sesame seeds would certainly add a nice crunch. And so on. Sometimes I make it earthy and dark with lots of freshly ground wheat, and other times, for a special treat, I use mostly white flour. Be creative with shaping the dough, too. Make sweet rolls or buns. Dust the tops of the loaves with seeds or oats. If you have a loaf that flops, tear it up to make bread crumbs. And then try it again. The whole process should take about six hours, from start to finish, especially now that it’s so toasty warm outside.


    Brown Bread

    Put 1 cup of warm water and 3 T. of yeast with a pinch of sugar in a smallish bowl. Mix and let sit till foamy (5-15 minutes).

    In a large bowl:

    ½ c. fat (butter, oil, etc.)
    1 c. sweetener (white or brown sugar, honey, molasses, etc)
    2 T. salt
    a mixture of about 3-5 cups of whole grains (oats, cracked wheat, cornmeal, rye, spelt, flax seed, leftover cooked cereal, whatever strikes your fancy—this is the fun part, but don’t overdo it or your bread can get heavy and crumbly)

    Pour five cups of boiling water (you may also use milk, or whey from cheese making) over the mixture, stir, and let sit until lukewarm. Add the yeast mixture. Add several more cups of whole wheat flour and then enough bread flour to make a knead-able dough. Knead till satiny and elastic, adding more white flour when it gets sticky. Flour the dirty bread bowl and plop the dough into it. Sprinkle more flour overtop. Cover with a towel and let sit till double.

    Cut the dough into four pieces and shape into loaves. Place in greased bread pans and let rise until nearly double. Gracefully slip the loaves into the oven, which has been already heated to 350 degrees, and bake for 25-35 minutes, or until the bottoms are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped. Dump the loaves out on a cooling rack or a cut-open brown paper bag, and, if you want, you can put the loaf pans away without washing them.


    To store the loaves, wait until they are completely cool, then bag and freeze them. But definitely keep one loaf out to eat for supper.

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  • Love Note

    June 27, 2008

    Tonight I got a love note from Mr. Handsome. He sent me an email (from my computer, while I was working in the kitchen—I wasn’t allowed to look) and this is what it said:

    I ordered tickets for “Trouble”, or something like that for tomorrow night. I also have acquired experienced childcare for the evening, so you and I can go out. The end. Love, The Rooooofer

    Is that not dear? I was so wanting to go to that play, but getting childcare for four kids at 7:30 in the evening is nigh impossible. (Okay, so he had some encouragement from my folks, but still.)

    So tomorrow night I’ll be footloose and fancy free. Whoa baby! Watch out!

    Note: While Mr. Handsome does roofing, he is a carpenter first and foremost. I’m not quite sure why he signed off The Roofer, except that it was fun to type Rooooofer. Maybe?

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  • Food

    June 27, 2008
    Since this blog is about the minutia of my life, I’ve decided to add recipes for the food that makes up the backbone of our daily diet. It’s more exciting to write about the new and unusual things I’m cooking rather than the everyday fare, but the everyday grub is important, too—it gives us a solid diet baseline from which I can experiment and it prevents me from ending up with starving (or bloated) children. And besides, the everyday grub is pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

    Granola
    Adapted from the Simple Granola recipe in The More-With-Less Cookbook

    Note: this recipe is also posted here.

    I ate it as a baby, my mom says. She just soaked it in hot water and then put it through the food mill. Mr. Handsome mixes it with homemade yogurt and jam for his morning break. Yo-Yo Boy is learning to make this all on his own. We eat it a lot. This recipe lasts us about a week.


    14 cups oats (I use half quick oats and half rolled oats)
    2 cups sugar
    2 cups whole wheat (or cracked wheat if you want more of a crunch)
    2 cups raw wheat germ
    1 tablespoon salt
    1 ½ cups canola oil
    1 3/4 cups water

    Mix the dry ingredients together and then add the wet. Spread the mixture on two large ungreased cookie sheets that have sides. Bake at 250 degrees for several hours, stirring occasionally until golden brown and crunchy. Cool completely and store in glass jars.


    Yield: about five quarts.

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