A week of doing...

No-Knead Artisan Loaves

from Jenny Can Cook

I made one white and one with wheat & flax seed. 

Both were delicious and easy!

 Here's another easy recipe from Jenny Can Cook.

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

I've made lots cinnamon rolls in my day, but these are the BEST.

I like that this is a small recipe and only makes a 

9" round pan of eight rolls.

Today I spent the morning making

"Grammy's Lotions and Potions" as my kids call them.

This is my toothpaste.

 It's got dirt in it (bentonite clay).

I like dirt. 

I like cinnamon, cloves, and peppermint in my toothpaste.

 Homemade Toothpaste  from Wellness Mama.

I also made

Magnesium Body Butter

and my favorite...

Bee Butter

(or Non-Petroleum Jelly)

2 ounces extra-virgin olive oil (4 T.)

1/2 ounce beeswax pastilles (1 T.)

1-2 t. raw honey (opt.)

Essential oils -- 12 drops (opt.)

In double boiler over simmering water, combine the olive oil and beeswax and slowly heat until wax has melted.  Remove mixture from heat and cool about 10 minutes, then add honey and/or essential oils of choice.  Beat with small whisk until creamy.If it separates a little, just stir it up.

Makes: 1/4 cup of bee butter.  Store in glass jar with screw top lid.  Keeps up to one year.

Uses:  Face cream, hand cream, body cream, chapped lips, dry feet, eczema.  The beeswax gives the skin a protective barrier from the elements:  weather, dry air, wind, sun, and pollutants. 

These are the pumpkins I decorated.

 I know... who spends time painting flowers on pumpkins

or making a patchwork pumpkin?

I do.

I like to create. 

 I just do. 

 So I do.

Inspiration from Alisa Burke! 

Do you see my rolled up hose on the porch?

I still haven't put it away because it's been warm here.

But it is supposed to get cold again.

 Oh, and speaking of the porch,

I finally oiled it!  

Another project ticked off the list!

We sold our steer calves this week at the local sale barn.
 

What fall projects are you doing?

A little chillier, a little darker, a little quieter...

 

The days are getting a little chillier, a little darker, a little quieter, a little shorter. I've had to break out my gloves and warm winter hat.  I'm not very well-adjusted yet to these colder days of 45 degrees for a high.   The hens have a heat lamp in their coop now that turns on at about 5:00 am and stays on until the sun rises fully, giving them a little extra light which stimulates egg production.  Twenty eggs a day makes me think it's a good idea.  This afternoon as the sun sank low, I noticed several hens and the rooster standing on one leg.  The ground is getting colder now too and I guess they are feeling it.

The weaning has begun.  Yesterday we got the cows and calves in and put these yellow nose flaps in the calves' noses.  The flaps are made of a flexible plastic with little nobs that stay in the their nostrils.  The flaps prevent the calves from sucking their mothers which eventually results in a weaned calf.  Weaning is one of the most stressful times in a calf's life.  Separation from mom as well as separation from their milk supply can cause stress and sickness.  Our hope with this new-to-us weaning method is that the sickness and stress is greatly reduced during the process.  In about 5-6 days we will bring the cows and calves back in and sort the calves away from their mothers to complete the weaning.  You might wonder why weaning is necessary.  The cows are pregnant right now and the double demands of the calf requesting milk and the developmental needs of fetus-calf puts a large nutritional demand on the cow. The calf is getting the majority of its nutrition from grazing now anyway, but the attachment to mom is still strong.

 I picked the last of the calendula flowers and parsley to dry.  

I'll use calendula in my body creams and parsley for cooking.

With the cold, fall days comes my desire to bake.  I especially like to bake bread and EAT bread.  I've come to the conclusion that I don't like store-bought bread.  For years when the kids were at home, I made our daily bread.  At least ten loaves a week.  After they flew the coop, I made bread only occasionally, but now I want to go back to baking all the bread we eat.  It's just the two of us, so it's not quite the chore it once was, and we both appreciate the crusty, rustic loaf and the healthful goodness it provides.

 I made a sourdough starter this past week and used it for these loaves.  They are a mix of white and whole wheat flour along with some ground flax seed and honey.  There's no oil in the bread except for what was in the pans to keep it from sticking.  But I sometimes like to butter the crusts of the loaves when they come out of the oven, and then there's the butter that must be smeared over each slice before eating! I found that by kneading the dough for an extra long time (maybe 15 minutes) the interior was very soft and the exterior crunchy. I think this bread would even make a good sandwich loaf.  I had a "good do" this time!  I've had my share of failures.  I was thinking that maybe tomorrow morning I'd use some of the sourdough starter to make sourdough pancakes for breakfast.  Doesn't that sound yummy?  Yep, I think so too.

If you watched The Great British Baking Show on Sunday, did you also watch the short clip about the  National Loaf?  During WWII England's Ministry of Food established a wheatmeal loaf as part of a food-saving plan.  The Brits preferred a white loaf, but because Britain imported 70% of it's grain at the time, it was determined that the national loaf must use the whole grain, thereby using all of the wheat grain without wasting any of it.  Although the people did not like the national loaf,  the wholewheat bread proved much more nutritional than the white breads.  I prefer the taste of whole grains and seeds in my bread loaves.  What kinds of bread do you prefer?


"How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?" --Julia Child

Swiss artisan bread...

Remember all the stuff I wrote about making sourdough breads?  Well, I fiddled and fiddled with it until I was tired of making heavy, dense bread that was mostly fed to the chickens.  There was a lot of pre-fermenting and long rising times to get a sourdough bread to its final baking destination, and I wouldn't have minded it too much if my loaves had turned out the way I had envisioned them.  But no.  I'm not sure if it was our northern climate or the sourdough starter itself or what, but I had pretty much given it up and then something wonderful happened.  A new recipe was found in the comments section of a sourdough website. I decided I just had to try it.  It's not a sourdough recipe though.  In fact, I think the commenter-guy, Heinz, decided that some of us out there might be sick of all this fiddle-and-fuss with sourdough and would rather spend less time and yet get great bread baking results.

The loaf you see above is the third loaf I've made in three weeks.  Hubs and I are able to polish off a loaf a week by having a slice of this bread toasted with our morning eggs.  It is just what we want to eat --  crusty on the outside, tender and light on the inside.

The recipe calls for the loaf to be made in a cloche type of clay baker which I do not have, but instead, I make my loaf in a cast iron Dutch oven.  I preheat my Dutch oven base just like they do the cloche and then I put the raised bread in when it's all heated up, pop the lid on, and bake according to the directions.  If your oven doesn't go up to 500, set it for 450.  I set mine at 450 and so far, it has come out perfectly each time.  Want to give it a try?  Here's the recipe.

Swiss Artisan Bread

I would like to share my recipe for my Swiss Artisan Bread which is simple to make, needs no preferment and hours + hours time before it is ready. I call it Swiss Artisan bread because it is closest to the bread we ate while growing up in Switzerland.  I use unbleached, organic King Arthur flour. I find that the dough develops well when the room temperature is around 77 degrees.  ~Heniz

2 cups of white Bread flour

1 cup of whole Wheat flour
½ cup of Rye flour
¼ tsp. Instant Yeast powder (Fast-Rising, Rapid-Rise, Quick Rise)
1 tsp. Honey
1 1/4 tsp. Sea Salt

1 1/2 cup filtered Water

▪ Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl.
▪ Add in the water (with dissolved honey) and mix until the liquid is fully absorbed.
▪ Knead the dough for approx. 8-10 minutes.
▪ Let the dough rest for 90 minutes in the bowl covered with a plastic bag.
▪ Gently flatten the dough on a flat surface.
▪ Then fold it like a letter and shape it into the desired form.
▪ Transfer dough into a proofing basket lined with parchment paper.
▪ Cover with a plastic bag and let it rest for 60 minutes before baking.
▪ Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 500 with (clay baking dish).
▪ Open the hot oven and transfer the dough with parchment paper into the baking dish.
▪ Score the top & lightly sprinkle with flour.
▪ Close the cover of the baking dish and bake for 30 minutes at 500.
▪ Remove the cover and continue baking at 400 until crust is as desired (about 10-15 minutes).

Good luck and bon appetit.

Taken from The Fresh Loaf, by Heniz

...................................................................

I'm currently reading a book called City of Tranquil Light by Bo Cadwell.  It is a novel written about a husband and wife who were missionaries to China in the early 1900s.  Since reading it, I often think about how very much we have here in America--plentiful and bountiful foods, good water to drink, and clean  living conditions.  Compared to the rest of the world, we are so rich in so many ways.  When I saw the quote below, I thought how very true it is that most times we reach people first through feeding their hungry bodies and then we can feed their hungry souls the Bread of Life.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

 ~Mahatma Gandhi

Fiddling with sourdough...

I have always loved baking bread and I've been doing it since I got married some 31 years ago.  Bread is always a challenge because it changes with its environment.  A hot, sunny day always seems to bring good results to my baking, but a humid, cool day can slow the rising process.  Ingredients can make or break a batch of bread -- inactive yeast, poor quality flour and the water temperature can all gravely affect bread results.  The best advice for successful bread baking is practice, practice, practice.

My newest bread baking challenge is to try my hands at making sourdough wheat bread.  We've been shying away from breads lately in our diet, but I've been reading that whole grain breads that are fermented, so to speak, in sourdough yeast mixtures are far healthier and more digestible than other whole grain breads because the sourdough yeasts break down the grain better for our body's use.  You might like this simple article and recipe  that explains it.

For the past couple weeks, I've been growing a sourdough starter on my kitchen counter.  Every 24 hours or so, I feed it with a little more water and a little more flour so that it doesn't quit bubbling and fermenting.  Last night I poured out a cup of the starter and stirred in a little flour and water to make a sponge.  It sat covered on the counter over night and today I made a dough and by late afternoon a nice, round loaf of "mostly" whole wheat bread popped out of the oven!  I say "mostly" because my actual starter is made with unbleached flour, not whole wheat.  I am not worried about being a whole wheat purist at the moment, but instead, I want to get a good quality, delicious tasting loaf that is "mostly" healthy.  I didn't really use a recipe today, but I went by feel.  The basic ingredients were:  the sourdough starter, flour, water, sea salt, a dab of honey, and a little dob of butter.  The "feel" comes from working the ingredients together and allowing it to sit, ferment, rise several times, and then I knead it for the right consistency and texture.  I also learned a little trick for the home baker from this video, Tartine Bread.  A restaurant baker teaches us to bake our bread, after the last rise, in a Dutch oven.  I used my cast iron Dutch oven and heated it in the oven for about 30 minutes at 450* F.  Then I gently dropped my bread dough in, slit the top of the raised dough, added the lid, and slid it back into the oven for a half hour.  After the 30 minutes went by, I removed the lid of the Dutch oven and allowed it to bake another 15 minutes or so until the crust was dark brown.  It worked like a charm!  The only thing I probably should have done was to lightly sprinkle the bottom of the pan with corn meal.  The bottom of the crust got a little too dark, but honestly, it still tasted great! 

There are all kinds of sourdough recipes out there, and I plan to fiddle around making lots of variations.  One thing I can't wait to make is a Swedish crispbread called Knäckebröd.  In the USA we can buy it as Wasa crispbread.  I had my first Wasa this week when we went traveling across South Dakota delivering bulls.   We took our cooler with food and drink, but I wanted an easy-to-take bread that would be substantial to eat, healthy, and low calorie.  Wasa crispbread was just the ticket!  It is so delicious, especially when stacked with good cheese and a thin slice of meat.  When we got home, I was anxious to find a way to make my own crispbread (because I'm weird that way) and sure enough, I found some recipes online.  Basically, it's rye sourdough bread that is rolled flat with a knobbed rolling pin like this one and then baked and allowed to cool and dry out completely before storing.  I ordered one of those fancy Swedish rolling pins, and now I'm just waiting for it to arrive so I can experiment.  I think the rolling pin will work well for making thin-and-crispy pizza crusts too.  Below is a video of Jamie Oliver learning to make crispbread from a Swedish bakery owner.  It appears quite simple to make, and the video is fun to watch.  Do you like to experiment with bread?  Do tell!

Four-Seeded Bread...

 

A dear friend gave me a special book, The Waldorf Book of Breads, and this recipe was the first one on the very first page.  It sounded so delicious and hearty, that I couldn't wait to make it.  In the notes it says, "This is the recipe for my most popular bread sold at the Viroqua (WI) Farmer's Market."  I know why!  The recipe says it makes 5 loaves, but I made 6.  I suppose it depends on how large you make your loaves.

Four-Seeded Bread

5 T. baking yeast

1/4 c. vegetable oil

1/2 c. non-instant milk powder (I used instant)

1/4 c blackstrap molasses

8 c. warm water (approx 100*F)

3 T. salt

2 c. rolled oats

4 c. whole wheat flour

high-gluten white flour, enough for a kneadable dough (6-8 cups for me)

1 c. sunflower seeds

1/4 c. flax seeds

1/2 c. millet

1/2 c. sesame seeds

In a large mixing bowl, place yeast, oil, milk powder, and molasses in warm water, stir and let sit for 5 minutes.  Stir in oats and 4 cups whole wheat flour and salt.  Let sit 5 minutes.  Add seeds and high-gluten flour.  Knead well (or use mixer with bread hook).  Let rise till it doubles in size.  Punch down and let rise a half hour more.  Make into 5 or 6 loaves.  Let rise until doubled.  Bake in 400*F oven for 40-45 minutes until dark brown in color.  

*My Notes:

  I used instant powdered milk (it's what I had)

~I didn't have high-gluten bread flour so I used regular unbleached white and added about 4 t. gluten powder.

~I didn't have millet so I skipped it.

~When preparing the bread for the pans, I sprinkle some oats and sesame seeds in the bottom of the pan, then brush the formed loaf with an egg wash and place it in the pan.  Then sprinkle more oats/seeds on top.

~The results -- DELICIOUS!  I ate it without butter last night and then ate it toasted with orange marmalade for breakfast.  So good.  Really, it is!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We've had a busy week.  DIL had her gall bladder removed so the Littles have spent quite a bit of time with Gram and Papa (which we love).  It also snowed about 6" here during the cold blast.  Sue loves to play fetch in the snow.

 

Sue

 from my front porch

 Mary Toodles trekking through the snow.

Toast!

Give us this day our daily bread.....

Do you eat bread every day?  I think I do most days.  This is a sample of our daily bread, fresh baked.  Saturday was bread-baking day and Peach and I played Betty Crocker and Suzie Homemaker together while Toodles took her morning nap.  It was so much fun (for me) to have another baking helper at the counter as I did years ago when my children rolled and patted and formed their own little bread loaves and put them into child-sized pans while I made the big loaves.

I've been making our daily bread for three decades now and I have a hard time bringing myself to buy bread from the store.  For me, it's more about being able to make different kinds of bread, it's about freshness and the smell of homemade bread in the oven.  Since I can make bread and I know how cost efficient and healthy it is to make homemade, I just do it.  I like to do it, and that makes a big difference too.  

Quite some time ago, I did the math on the cost of making bread at home, and I came up with 30 cents a loaf.  It could be a little more these days, but not much more. Ah ha!  I found one baker here that says she makes her bread for 75 cents per loaf, but if you buy your supplies in bulk like I do, I think you can further reduce that price. My kids used to beg for "town bread" back when they were littles and now they prefer homemade breads.  Third-Born son even started baking his own bread after he left home when his sister-in-law gave him her bread machine.  I was so proud of him!  Only Daughter bakes bread now and then for her family and so does my daughter-in-law.  I think it's a good skill to have and to practice because we all know.... practice makes perfect loaves.

I love to eat just plain old bread & butter, especially when it's warm from the oven, but I go in spurts with my choice of  spreads.  Most mornings I have a stack piece of toast with my eggs or yogurt or oatmeal, and I love to make what I call a "dessert toast" at the end of breakfast.  Right now Honey and I are in a grape jelly trend.  A hunter gave us several jars of his own homemade this fall and I'm telling you, it's the best grape jelly I've ever had!  Before the grape jelly came to us, we were on a raw honey kick, and I'm figuring we will be going back to that soon since the jelly is nearly all ate up.  I love raw honey on bread or toast or straight off the spoon.  When I was growing up at home, we had toast with peanut butter nearly every single morning with breakfast.  I still love it -- the toast almost burnt  (but not entirely) with a thick spread of creamy Jif Peanut Butter melting on top.  I craved peanut butter toast when I was pregnant.  Sometimes I get hooked on cinnamon and sugar toast.  I have a glass cheese shaker with cinnamon & sugar all mixed up so it's handy for sprinkling on toast.  All I know is that I love it all.  Love toast!  Do you?

Your First Loaf at the Fresh Loaf 
Pauline's Wheat Bread (very similar to my everyday loaf)

Wreath party....

The Nesting Place is having a Wreath Party!  What's a wreath party?  It's a bloggy thing where everyone links to their own homemade, handmade wreaths.  So I'm in.  Yesterday I did some baking and came up with these bread wreaths.  I'm going to fiddle around with making some more in the days to come leading up to Christmas so I can get it perfected.  Wouldn't these make nice gifts or pretty breads for the holidays?

I made my wreaths out of a French Bread recipe and then did the fancy cutting using this tutorial at Kitchen Mage.  You could use any bread dough you like -- even frozen bread dough would work for this.  The main thing is to roll the dough into a nice rope and then stick it together.  Let it rise for about 30-40 minutes and then do the snipping with a scissors, just before baking.  Hang it up with a ribbon if you want to or just tear off a little "leaf" and eat it up!

Part 2: Crackle Bread, Dutch Crunch, or Tijgerbrood...

Last night I decided to make another trial batch of Crackle Bread and experiment with glopping more rice batter onto the bread as well as increasing bake times.  I am happy on both accounts.  Still, I think there is some mysterious trick to getting an extra crackly crust that I'm not quite getting.  It crackles, but some pictures I have seen of Dutch Crunch, Crackle Bread or Tijgerbrood shows an even deeper cracked crust than mine.

What I did:  
I took 9 frozen Rhodes Rolls from the freezer and thawed them on a greased cookie sheet.  (Parchment paper might have been smarter).

About midway through the bread proofing, I made a single batch of the  rice batter recipe and let it double in size.  When the bread was through proofing and was approximately double in size, I smeared the rice batter generously over the 9 rolls.  I had the oven pre-heating to 380* F and popped them in for approximately 20 minutes or until deep golden brown.

The result was a very crisp crust and a soft chewy interior.  Served warm (not hot), these were really terrific.  We all sampled them before padding off to bed.  I left them on the counter overnight to completely cool and we had Dutch Crunch with our morning coffee.  Scrumptious!  I did end up putting three of my five loaves of crackle bread into plastic bags to store in the freezer since we really don't need to eat that much bread in a day or so. 

About the frozen bread rolls -- it's a simple way to get delicious bread without the work, however, I think I would rather make the bread using either a homemade white bread recipe or wheat recipe because the dough would stand up to the rice batter more.  I think frozen bread tends to be wimpy and will easily go flat when jostled too much.

Whenever I make a wheat bread, I add at least half unbleached flour or white flour to my flour mixture.  I prefer a lighter bread, even if it is wheat.  I have also found that I can add more fiber to my loaves by adding ground oatmeal.  I just dump a cup or so into my blender and whir it until it resembles flour.  You can make it as fine or course as you like.  Add to replace one of the cups of flour in your recipes.

As I was browsing CookingBread.Com (shouldn't that be BAKINGbread.com?) I found another recipe that I'd like to try called Maple Seeded Bread.  If you choose to go to this recipe, notice how the entire loaf is coated with seeds.  I have always used an egg wash and then sprinkled seeds or grains on top of my loaves before baking, but in their bread making instructions, they coat the shaped bread with egg white and then roll the whole loaf in a pan of seeds to completely coat it and then brush more egg white over that to keep them glued on.  Smart!  I still think you might have some bits falling off as you cut your bread, but I like the look and the method used in coating loaves with seeds or grains.

Happy Baking!

P.S.  Thank you ALL for your sweet comments on my bread baking.  I can't wait to see if any of you try it out and what your results are like.

Crackle Bread, Dutch Crunch or Tijgerbrood...

Bread.  The staff of life.  Isn't it amazing the varieties of bread we make in various cultures?  I have been baking bread for many years and I am constantly wanting to try different bread recipes and methods of making bread.  I had just used up half of the last remaining loaf of bread and so declared to myself that today was bread-making day.   I decided to do something a little different in my bread making today -- crackle bread.  I had never heard of it until I was reading a blog called The Woman and the Wheat.  The post where I first discovered this yummy bread was here and that post was a springboard to a bit of online research to learn more about making Crackle Bread, Dutch Crunch, or Tijgerbrood (tiger bread in Dutch) -- whichever name you wish to call this tasty loaf.  I checked one of my favorite bread sites, The Fresh Loaf and found a nice listing of  the breads here.  I also found The Knead For Bread, a lovely bread recipe collection blog, and I used their Crackle Bread recipe for my topping and just made one of my standard bread recipes as the foundation loaf.  As you can see by the above picture, the topping is really a dough in and of itself.  It is a rice batter that is made ahead before you are ready to bake your loaves so it has time to rise.  Then you frost your raised bread loaves generously with the rice batter and pop them into the oven to bake.  The result is a crackly top as pictured below.

You can see by the above picture that my largest loaf has the deepest cracks, and I remember coating it a bit thicker than the others.  I really should have made double the rice batter to slather on the other loaves before baking, but alas, I only had what I had.  I *think* the bread may have had a crustier top and more crunch had I been more generous with it.  Next time I will also add a little more bake time for a darker crust and deeper contrast in the bread cracks.

The topping on the bread is sweet and crunchy and really adds a nice dimension to the everyday loaf. It does not fall off like some toppings I have added to breads, but that's because it's a batter and it sticks better than seeds and grains that are sprinkled onto an egg wash.  I'm anxious to try this again with the next batch of bread, and I will definitely double the rice batter.  I'd really like to try it on rolls too.  You'd get more crunch on individual rolls, I think.  Yum!

**Addendum

One thing to note, make only enough crackle bread to eat fresh.  If you put the loaves or rolls in plastic bags, the crunchy topping gets soft.  It doesn't affect the bread or the taste, but there's just no crunch.  Also, next time I will not make loaves in bread pans, but make them free-standing on cookie sheets so as to smear on more rice batter for coverage and over-all crunch.

More bread...

More bread ideas anyone?

My daughter-in-love loaned me her new book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I've been baking bread for years and years, but I haven't really gotten into the artisan style breads. My family really prefers the plain sandwich loaf type breads -- white or whole grain. They aren't into the hard crusty breads much. I, on the other hand, love ALL breads! Round, baguette, boules, onion, olive, rye, wheat, oat, cheese, or dill. Whack off a generous slice for me! This book is terrific because it not only gives you recipes for the artisan type breads, but also for the traditional loaves, peasant breads, sticky rolls, pretzels, and more. There's a Tuscan White Bean Dip that I'm dying to try too. Hertzberg and Francois have thrown in a few recipes to serve alongside your homemade breads. Things like: Yogurt Soup with Cucumber and Mint, Bruschetta, and Tuscan Bread Salad to name just a few. There are some sandwich recipes to make with your homemade breads: Pan Bagna (Tuna and Veggie Sandwich), Reuben, and Stromboli.



As you can see by my pics, I made one of the basic doughs called Soft American-Style White Bread and turned some of it into Cinnamon Sticky Rolls (I used the filling and topping from this recipe). They were excellent, and I still have two more loaves worth of dough left in my frig to use later. I plan to make Sugar Bread with what's left and take it as a host/hostess gift for tomorrow's Memorial Day Get-Together.

What makes Artisan Bread in Five Minutes so "easy" is that you make a basic dough recipe that takes just five minutes to mix up and toss into the frig to use whenever. It yields 3 or 4 one pound loaves that you bake whenever you need bread. It could be daily or a couple times a week. The longer the dough sits in the frig, the more fermented and tangy the dough becomes. Think sourdough. The add-ins are endless. You can be so creative with one basic dough recipe, yet there are several doughs to try in the book. Below, you'll see just how simple the Five Minute Bread is to make. (turn off music to hear it)

Ready, set, bread!

READY:
Here's my white bread dough, formed and set into well-greased pans. I'm trying a "new thing" with the bread this time -- double loaves. Kathie at Island Sparrow says she always bakes her loaves with two rounds in a regular bread pan as shown above. I don't know why exactly she does this, but I thought, "Why not?" I love trying something new.



SET:
The bread is raised to about double in size so I slashed the tops with a razor blade and spritzed them with water.



BREAD:
Fresh out of the oven, the loaves turned out just like I wanted. Now I can see why a double loaf of bread would be smart. You could leave it whole or break it in half when you don't need a whole loaf of bread. This would help with spoiling, but generally, a loaf of fresh bread doesn't last long at our house. Please pass the butter.

Just for fun, I found these bread kneading and shaping tutorials at The Back Home Bakery which is in Kalispell, Montana. I'm mesmerized by them. And if you love to make homemade bread like I do or if you are just curious about bread-making, you might like another of my favorite bread links, The Fresh Loaf. You'll find recipes, tutorials, and forums all about baking bread.



One more photograph..... I went out walking through the pasture yesterday afternoon and came home with a small bunch of blue bells and the breast feather of a hawk (or something). I love my springtime prairie.

Artisan-ish bread....

I've been baking bread for 26 years and there's still so much to learn! Especially nowadays when all the rage is artisan breads..... those crisp-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside loaves that you can buy from your fine, local bakeries. I don't have a fine, local bakery so I have to BE THE BAKERY instead. Clarice, from Storybook Woods sic'd me onto a great little recipe that's so easy to make and the results are very artisan, don't you think? The recipe comes from Jeff Hertzberg, author of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The title sounds catchy, doesn't it? And it's fairly true, except that you really have to be "around" to make bread. This Deli-Style Rye recipe really makes a great little bread. Tasty, easy-to-make, pretty to look at, and mostly healthy. (Isn't anything healthier than that gooey store bread that you can squeeze down to the size of a gum ball?)

Give this recipe a shot. It's worth your time, and really, it isn't a lot of fuss like most people think bread-making is. A few notes here.....I don't have a pizza peel or bakinig stone, but the instructions allow for that. I used a parchment-lined cookie sheet. The other thing I found was that if you give the dough a day or more in the frig, you will get better rising results on your loaves when you bake them. I made my first loaf the day I made the dough, but made two other loaves a few days later and they raised much better than the first. I also added 2 T. olive oil to the dough. I think it makes a more tender crumb. Oh, and one more little change-a-roo I made was to use an egg white wash (1 egg white whisked with a tablespoon of water) for the top. The seeds and things stick better with this way. (I can't help it, I always mess with a recipe!)

One more thing to add before I sign off. Last night I made the most terrific recipe for a Reuben sandwich that we've ever had! It's a Rachael Ray recipe called Jumbo Reuben Loaf and the good news.....it takes only 30 minutes or less to make! I used the two loaves you see here for my bread and it was truly delish! My Hub always makes the comment, "How much would this cost you at a restaurant?" whenever he really likes the chow. And yep, he said it last night! I'm copying the recipe here because Food Network takes so long to download. One note about this recipe, I don't like the spices in my cabbage/kraut, so I omitted everything except the nutmeg. I also used balsamic vinegar (only 1-2 T.) instead of the red wine vinegar. We didn't make the sauce for the sandwich. YUM-O!


Jumbo Reuben Loaf
Recipe courtesy Rachael Ray
Show:
30 Minute Meals

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small (1 1/2 pounds) red cabbage, quartered, cored and shredded
2 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 tablespoons grill seasoning (recommended: Montreal Steak Seasoning by McCormick)
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/4 cup red wine or cider vinegar
1 large pumpernickel, rye or sourdough bread from bakery counter
1/2 pound deli sliced corned beef
1/2 pound deli sliced smoked turkey
1/2 pound deli sliced pastrami
1/2 pound sliced Swiss cheese
1/2 cup sweet pickle relish
1 cup chili sauce

Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. To very hot skillet add vegetable oil, bay, garlic, cabbage, cloves, cinnamon stick and nutmeg. Cook, stirring frequently, 5 minutes, then add in the grill seasoning and brown sugar and toss to coat. Add vinegar, cook off 2 minutes then remove from heat and let stand. Remove bay leaf and cinnamon stick.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Cut 1 inch off bread across the whole loaf to remove the top. Remove the soft insides of the bread to form a bread bowl. Pile half the cabbage into base of the bread. Fill bread with meats and Swiss cheese. Place filled bread into the oven to melt the Swiss. Top melted cheese with the remaining seared pickled cabbage. Slather the top with sweet pickle relish mixed with chili sauce and set bread top into place. The loaf will appear whole and empty to the eye. Pack to travel or serve on cutting board. Cut the loaf into 6 sections and serve.

"How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?"
~Julia Child