Home-made Bread

Instead of complaining about the relentless rainy downpour in New York yesterday, I decided to use the weather to my advantage and bake bread. For while humidity will torpedo many a kitchen endeavor (meringues, most candy and nearly anything involving egg whites), low pressure days are perfect to use yeast, the theory being that it works better (i.e., rises more easily) without the competition of high pressure air pushing it down.

Bread baking is easy, requires time (but not much of the cook's time), fills the house with a marvelous aroma -- and then allows you and your guests to enjoy the freshest bread imaginable.

The vintage recipe I chose called for heating milk, sugar, salt and butter in a saucepan and letting it cool to lukewarm.

Meantime, pour one cup of warm water in a bowl and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir to blend. (The water should be between 105 and 110 F.  If the water is too cold, the yeast won't bloom; if it's too hot, the yeast may die.) You can use a candy thermometer or just sprinkle some drops on your wrist -- it should feel warm, not hot. I also add a tiny bit of sugar to hasten the yeast's bloom.

After five or ten minutes, the mixture should look like this and you know the yeast is working. If it doesn't, check the date on your yeast package (might it have expired?) and try again with a fresher yeast, warm water and a bit of sugar.

Combine the yeast and the milk mixture in a large bowl. Mix in three cups of flour and stir until nearly smooth. Add in the rest of the flour and combine.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl, cover with a cloth and let it rise in a warm spot until double, about one hour.

Punch it down (as satisfying as it sounds) form into two loaves and place in greased pans. Cover again and let rise until doubled.

When the loaves look like this, brush the top with butter or shortening and place in a preheated 400 F oven. After ten minutes, reduce the heat to 300F and let bake for another 45 minutes.

Production notes: I thought I followed this recipe exactly (before I spilled orange extract from another baking project all over the recipe card), but later realized I had used only one package of yeast instead of two -- and it still came out fine, because of the low pressure and/or the power of yeast. The moral here is: You can't screw this up, or even if you do, it still works and is delicious. I also used butter instead of shortening.  Full recipe typed out below.

Home-made Bread (from Ethel Hayes, Sunbury)

1 cup milk
3 T sugar
2 1/2 t. salt
6 T shortening
1 cup warm water
2 pkg. active dry yeast
6 cup all-purpose flour

Mix milk, sugar, salt and shortening (butter) in a saucepan and scald. Set aside and cool to lukewarm.

Sprinkle two envelopes of yeast in one cup of warm (100 F) water and set aside.

Combine two mixtures and add three cups of flour. Stir with a wooden spoon until smooth.
Add three more cups of flour and stir until combined.
Turn out on a floured board and knead until smooth and elastic.

Place in greased bowl, cover with a cloth and let rise until doubled (approximately one hour).
Divide dough and place in two greased bread pans. Brush top with melted butter or shortening.

Bake for ten minutes in a 400 F oven.
Lower heat to 300 F and bake for 45 minutes.
Remove to rack, cool slightly and turn out bread. Cool completely.

Bread Pudding

I'm back, after far too long away from my oven.  One reason excuse is that the DH and I spent a week in Paris, swapping apartments with a French family we "met" on craigslist.org.  We'd done this before and, like the last time, I returned to the surprising food remnants of the Parisians' stay in New York -- supermarket white bread and other items that I would never purchase.  (The first family we swapped with even left some Kraft American cheese!!)  We couldn't believe that while we were indulging in the most delicious cheese and bread ever, the French families had "enjoyed"  what I consider the lowest common denominator of American food.

And so, faced with a loaf of white bread and whole milk (which I never use, preferring to chew my calories), I made the only prudent decision -- to transform the leftovers into a delicious bread pudding.  This is the bread pudding of my dreams, rich and custard-y.  In fact, it was more liked baked custard than what we know today as bread pudding.

The recipe instructs "crumbling" the bread; most bread pudding recipes in the early- to-mid 20th century were were simply vehicles to "use up" stale bread.  But the super-preserved supermarket bread in my refrigerator was still fresh, so I cubed it.  It took about 3.5 slices to fill the three-cup measure.

The bread cubes and sugar are placed in a bowl and covered with the hot milk for ten minutes.

Two very well beaten eggs (below) are added to the mixture, along with salt, vanilla, lemon extract and melted butter.

The batter is very liquid-y.   Pour into an 8 x 8 (or similar size pan).  I lined it with aluminum foil, mostly to save clean-up time.

The bread pudding pan is then placed inside a larger one (below).  Add hot water to the larger pan (most easily accomplished after it is on the oven rack, to avoid spilling).  This water bath helps the custard cook at a more constant temperature, insuring a better result.

My custard did not come out perfectly, despite the water bath.  (It is a bit weepy, which may be hard to see in the photograph.) I got "involved" with Facebook while it was in the oven and let it bake a bit too long.  Still, it was delicious, even if the consistency was not absolutely perfect.

I had to let this bake for over one hour, not the 45 minutes called for, as it was still quite loose at that point.  The custard should jiggle a bit, but not be too firm. It will continue to bake as it cools in the hot liquid.  Remove from the pan, plate and add a sprinkling of cinnamon on top for both appearance and flavor.  And then, enjoy!

The Eight Hour Chicken Sandwich

DH arrived home yesterday from a long business trip and, wanting to make him something special for dinner, I decided to surprise him with a chicken sandwich.  But, as the late great Laurie Colwin said, a really good chicken sandwich takes hours -- one needs to roast a chicken, bake a loaf of white bread and whip up a batch of homemade mayonnaise.  So that's exactly what I did.  Eight hours later, dinner was served!

Using a vintage bread recipe (see the bottom of this post), I put together the dough and then seasoned and roasted a chicken.

Next, I made some delicious mayonnaise in just five minutes, using the ingredients below.  One *should* hand whisk the oil, but I did it all in the blender and it was perfect.

Using the best quality ingredients -- like this olive oil (axiomia.biz) and Edmond Fallot mustard (from France)  --
will make for an excellent mayonnaise.

Finally, at about 6 p.m., all the elements were in place and the sandwiches were ready to be made.  (But it's not like I spent all those hours in the kitchen  -- I went to the gym when the bread was rising, shopped the farmer's market when the chicken was roasting and worked on a freelance job while the bread was baking.)

I halved the bread recipe and got two smallish loaves.  The kitchen was perfumed with the aroma baking bread for hours.

I let the roasted chicken cool before slicing it.  Only white meat for DH.

Once you see how easy and delicious homemade mayonnaise is, you might never go back.  I used a modern recipe I found on the internet.  

These sandwiches were wonderful; the addition of farmer's market tomatoes and lettuce only made them better.  

Of course, chicken sandwiches can be made in five minutes with store bought bread and mayonnaise and a supermarket rotisserie chicken.  But there's something quite satisfying about going back to the very basics, to the elemental building blocks to create something -- that kind of activity is too often lost in our swirling busy world.  (Of course, maybe it's lost precisely because making a chicken sandwich takes eight hours, and we have better things to do with our time.)

The bread recipe I used is below, but I wouldn't recommend it.  I much prefer this recipe, if you're going to make the effort to bake bread.