I don’t need bread. I don’t like bread. But the Ungardener does. Remember our goats-do-roam-wine bread odyssey to Fairview?
Jami @ An Oregon Cottage is running a week of back to basics posts (live simply, make do, or do without) and she started with simple-breads-to-make. They like crusts. So do we – the joy of baking your own bread – is that people who like crusts – can bake rolls. A one person, single serving, crisp crusty loaf of bread!
Once we were on a no wheat diet. That means no gluten in the non-wheat flour, and then rolls tend to slide away into a puddle, like a melted ice cream cone. I bought a 6-muffins-pan. It has, irritating fluted sides (perhaps it was meant for French patisserie fruit tarts, but I wanted lunch sized muffins …) Then I made little collars of baking parchment, and that works like a dream.
To Cape Columbine
Then Susan J Tweit at Walking Nature Home is posting about living lightly, in parallel to writing a book about it. Latest post was on eating-locally food miles. I envy her her farmer's market - they carry whatever's in season from our foodshed, which they define as a hundred mile radius around our small town. Our daily bread, despite us living surrounded by wheat fields, usually has ADDED FOOD MILES. Added by us, because we buy our bread at Woolworths, for the Good-Food-Journey, in Cape Town, or Worcester, or yesterday on the West Coast. Sliced low GI, which we freeze, then use as needed.
Our friend Gayle has built an out door bread oven. At the inauguration, we discovered after 4 years of living here, that we can at least buy locally milled flour, tho not locally baked bread. So we have whupped off fours hours driving time from our daily bread.
At Cape Columbine
Kneading dough gives me eczema, so I tweak a no-knead recipe. And I definitely don’t want a squishy white loaf!
Elephant’s Eye Rolls
4 cups brown bread flour (you can replace 2 cups with any other flour or crushed grain)
1 packet dry yeast
½ tsp salt
Add sunflower or poppy seeds for variety
Mix together.
1 tsp honey
2 tsps olive oil
~ 1 ½ cups of warm water (or buttermilk)
Mix together.
Add liquid to flour, adding more water if necessary, to form dough. Allow to stand for 10 minutes.
Knead (or just mix with a wooden spoon, as I do)
Divide into six, for large muffin tin.
Leave to rise for 25 minutes, until doubled in bulk.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 40 minutes.
Tap the bottom, if it sounds hollow, bread is baked. Allow to cool before eating. Keeps happily for the three days it takes us, to eat for lunch.
After worthily baking your own bread, in an idle moment, play with Wordle. Paste in your blog URL and you get a word picture of your recent posts. Like reading tea-leaves. Consult the oracle. The first time I did it - back came the solemn instruction - Water One Garden. Yes, sir!
Pictures by Jurg and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye
I don't eat it often but when I do I leave the crust to the very end - it's my favouite part!!
ReplyDeleteHere we have Belfast Baps - hugs affairs of white rolls which are so soft and lovely and oh dear, now I'm hungry...
But I usually go for brown, multi-grain bread which none of our blasted local bakers make!! *shakes head* I guess we are super lucky to still have 2 good bakers in town and the supermarkets :)
I, unfortunately, LOVE bread :) And not the healthy whole wheat kind, but gourmet white breads. A friend of mine used to call them 'White Death'. LOL
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recipe. It sounds great! And I like Wordle too. The word picture for my blog said THINK, which I liked too.
ReplyDeletemmm...the aroma of bread in the oven is unbeatable...by the way, one can see the elephant in the mountain as clear as daylight...
ReplyDeleteDiana, I'm trying to imagine being indifferent to bread -- but I can't do it. I remember, even as a young child, reacting to that "Man cannot live by bread alone" quote from the bible with the thought, "Why not??" I began baking bread weekly during the years when I didn't have good bread available locally. For many years, I baked two loaves each week and gave one away (which made we quite popular!); these days, I just bake one loaf at a time.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I belong to a local CSA and eat all those fresh local veggies and greens, I would actually be quite happy to live on a diet composed entirely of bread, cheese, chocolate and tea! -Jean
The name "Cape Columbine" makes me daydream -- and your picture is incredible, Diana!
ReplyDeleteI never thought of using wordle as a sort of psychoanalysis of one's immediate blog post past. How fun!
My husband loves his bread -- but it has to be European-style, with the really crusty crust and the whole grains and the soft middle, which we cannot find around here (oh, what I wouldn't give for the luxury of a German bakery!) so we learned to make our own, and the recipe we finally settled on is for a no-knead dough that can sit in the fridge for up to 2 weeks -- so we just make a huge batch and break off a piece when we're ready to bake a loaf. I'm like you, though, bread is okay, but I really could do without and never notice the lack. Potatoes and rice are my preferred starch choices. :)
HOA = Home Owner's Association. In different parts of the USA, they area more or less powerful. Here in the Houston, Texas area, they are very powerful indeed. Because we have no zoning, often the deed restrictions of a property, enforced by the HOA, are the only property use guidelines in effect. I think, sometimes, we believe in everyone else's freedom to do exactly what we want!
ReplyDeleteI read "Goats Do Roam" first, then this post. To me there is no better food combination in the world than bread and cheese. Must be the Italian in me! Add olive oil, roast peppers, and a pale ale (not a wine person) and I'm in heaven.
ReplyDeleteMommo raised all 4 children on brown bread or crusty Italian loaves. This was through the 40's, 50's, and 60's. She was ahead of her time. I would plead for the fluffy white stuff (Wonderbread here) because all my friends ate it. I still buy it to use for tomato sandwiches, just for old times.
Thanks for the recipe. Will give it a go.
Na
Thanks for the shout-out, Diana! I, too, can't imagine being indifferent to bread. :-) I'd take it any day over rice or potatoes...
ReplyDelete