November 2008 – Page 8 – Jennifer Murch

I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to making bread. I can’t seem to get my act together long enough to feed the starters three times a day. I don’t remember ever having this problem before. Even when I was hemorrhaging and ended up in the hospital, even when an explosive 14 year old foster daughter landed in our lap, even when I traveled, my starters never got neglected.

But on Saturday I went shopping all day long and forgot to put “do the starters” on Mr. Handsome’s list and then I forgot to call home at lunchtime to tell him to feel the babies, so they only got two feedings that day.

And then yesterday I got sick (a stomach bug) and forgot to remind Mr. Handsome to give the babies their bedtime feeding because I fell asleep at 7:30 and slept all night long (and that was after I slept from 3-6 pm, and that was after taking periodic naps all day long … I was doing a lot of sleeping). It’s not like I can blame Mr. Handsome. Not at all, really. See, he had been swamped with work: taking all the kids to church, hosting my grandparents who were visiting from PA, and then my balding bro and his wife came too, and making dinner (potato soup and apple pie) for everyone. If the starter babies were going to compete with all that chaos, then they needed to be the type of baby that screams bloody murder, which they aren’t.

The good news is that now I know what the starters looks like when they’ve only had two feedings. Just for the record, the white starter gets a thin layer of frothy liquid on top, and the whole wheat starter smells a little flat. They’re probably just fine, and I could’ve baked with them, except that I didn’t have enough starter to use in bread and still have some leftover to keep it going. So, we’re waiting till tomorrow.

We’re down to the last couple loaves of sourdough bread in the freezer, so the other morning I got my starter babies out of the fridge and began to rev them up again. In the meantime, however, I mixed up a triple recipe of oatmeal bread. We needed something to tide us over for the following several days, and I realized that I hadn’t made oatmeal bread in a long time, at least as long as I’ve had this blog. I was quite surprised that I had gone for so long without making something as basic as oatmeal bread. And something as delicious as oatmeal bread. I love oatmeal bread. (How many times did I just say “oatmeal bread”?)

This bread is like candy, soft and sweet and tender and chewy. Yesterday we ate it fresh—thick slices spread with butter and honey or grape jelly, along with our dinner, a soup of collard greens, ham, and lentils.

(The kids hated the soup, but they gagged it down. Literally. Yo-Yo Boy dry-heaved once. I had no mercy, snapping at him, “If you’re going to do that then go to the bathroom.” It took them about an hour to eat that one ladle of soup. An hour! I got so furious at them for turning their noses up at what I considered to be perfectly reasonable and delectable fare that I had a screaming hissy fit about how I was sick of cooking good food and then having no one eat it, and then I stomped off upstairs to get my shower and sulk. When I came back down, Miss Becca Boo, who was still eating, happily showed me a dollar bill that Yo-Yo Boy was going to give her if she finished her soup. My son was paying my daughter to finish her soup? I will never understand my children.)

But back to the bread, the oatmeal bread. It makes really good toast, sandwiches, dinner rolls, whatever. It’s just really good.

Oatmeal Bread
Adapted from the More-With-Less Cookbook

Don’t try to bulk up this recipe with whole grains, at least not the first go-round. Make it as is, so that you get to taste it in all its glory. After that, feel free to dump in more whole wheat, flax meal, and whatever else makes you feel self-righteous.

1 cup quick oats
½ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups boiling water
1 tablespoon yeast
½ cup warm water
5 cups white flour

In a small bowl, mix together the yeast and ½ cup warm water and a pinch of sugar and set aside to dissolve and froth.

Measure the first five ingredients into a large bowl and then pour the boiling water over them, stirring well to combine. Allow the mixture to sit for at least 15 minutes so that the grains can soften and plump and so the water can cool down enough to not kill the yeast. When the mixture is only slightly warm, add the yeast, stir well, and then add the rest of the flour. Knead for five to ten minutes, adding more flour if necessary. Sprinkle the bottom of the dirty bread bowl with flour and set the dough back in, dusting the top with flour and then covering with a cloth. Allow the dough to rise until doubled, then cut into two loaves and place in well-greased bread pans. Let rise till nearly doubled, and bake at 350 degrees for 25-40 minutes.

A single recipe makes two loaves, a double recipe makes three (I make generous loaves), and a triple recipe makes five loaves.

I Forgot Them, Twice!

Tiding Us Over