Every summer when I was a child, my family spent two weeks at my grandparents' farm in Kentucky. Grandma and Grandpa milked their own cows, gathered eggs from their chickens, and ate plentifully from their garden. Grandma canned beans, put up preserves, and made butter, but she didn't make bread. Bread was delivered weekly by the bread man. While my grandmother stood at the door of the van to buy her ordinary lunch bread, my older sister, Linda, and I climbed into the van, into a wonderworld of yeasty and sugary smells from doughnuts, raisin breads, muffins, buns, rolls, cupcakes, cookies, coffee cakes. Conferring in excited whispers, we scanned the shelves to choose our promised treat: a frosted cupcake or an M&M cookie? A cinnamon roll or a lemon-curd Danish?
Years later, with the Kentucky farm well behind me in years, I grew closer to its spirit as I joined the back-to-the-land movement of the sixties and lived on a hippy commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. We didn't have milking cows, but we did have chickens. We had a garden, too, but it didn't do well in that dry climate on a piece of land with little water. Grandma and Grandpa had lived more self-sufficiently, but in one respect, at least, I was more close-to-the-land than Grandma: I made bread.
I became an enthusiastic and diversified bread maker. The Wonderful World of Bread became my best-thumbed book. I made muffins, Irish soda bread, and moist steamed breads. I made beautiful braided Jewish challah,
Swedish rye, dark multigrain breads, golden whole wheat loaves that rose over the loaf pan with chef's-hat tops, honey cinnamon buns, sunflower seed and raisin breads, boiled and baked bagels, traditionally twisted pretzels, and fried doughnuts (a concession to unhealthy bread). On baking days, the communal kitchen smelled like a bread van, only more wholesome and less sugary.
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| Challah made by Anne Swinehart |
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| Irish soda bread |
I learned to treat yeast carefully so it would work its magic. I learned the action of the verb "to knead." My arms grew muscular from working that action until the dough was stretchy and satiny. I discovered the best places to set the dough to rise—behind the oven in the winter, in the upper loft in the summer—covered with a damp cloth and hidden away like a secret. With the mysterious power of yeast at work, for the next few hours the dough grew and puffed and rose to double its size. When I retrieved it and gave it a good hard punch with my fist, it lost its pride with a defeated grunt and fell in on itself, only to rise triumphantly in the oven.
Another woman on the commune, Jessie, was as much a bread maker as I. One day as we worked in the kitchen, we put two and two together: (1) We had no garden vegetables but lots of bread. (2) Down the way, the farmers' wives, like my grandmother, grew marvelous vegetables but didn't bake bread. Why not make a trade?
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| Boston brown bread |
That week we made extra breads and bundled them into baskets. Dressed in our long skirts and beaded necklaces, we knocked on the door of one farmhouse after another, displaying our baskets of homemade bread and suggesting a trade for vegetables. The housewives, enticed as much by the quaintness of the idea as by the good smells and beautiful displays, said they would love fresh bread and they had green beans, beets, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, herbs, chard, artichokes to spare. Week after week, whatever was in season they piled into our arms.
The trade agreement lasted for two summers before the commune broke up and people moved elsewhere, but for that short time, Jessie and I served as the California 1960s equivalent of the Kentucky bread man.
Next week: "A Taste of the Mountains for City Folks"
Recipes from this post:
Irish soda bread
Boston brown bread
High-protein challah
Bagels
Esalen Ed Taylor's Big Sur brown bread
yield: 1 small loaf
(Note: This bread is the most yeast-bread-like of any quick bread I know. I particularly like to use it for bread bowls for soup.)
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 tablespoon honey
1 cup buttermilk or yogurt
Preparation
Beat the egg. Oil a baking sheet or cast-iron skillet. Preheat the oven to 375º.
To make
Stir the dry ingredients together. Beat the honey and buttermilk or yogurt into the beaten egg. Gradually pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and blend everything with your hands. If the dough seems too dry, add more liquid; if too wet, add more flour. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Shape the dough into a round, flat loaf and place it on the oiled baking sheet or skillet. Slash it across the top, 1/2 inch deep, in three places. Bake the bread at 375º for 25-30 minutes. When it is done, it should sound hollow when you thump it on the bottom.
BOSTON BROWN BREAD
yield: 2 round loaves
(I love steamed breads and puddings. This is one of the best. It uses no yeast.)
Ingredients
1 1/4 cup whole wheat, rye, oat, or buckwheat flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup sifted whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup raisins
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup molasses
Preparation
Butter two coffee cans, bottoms and sides. Put a large kettle of water on the stove to boil.
Mix the dry ingredients and toss in the raisins thoroughly. Mix the buttermilk and molasses together and stir the mixture into the flours. Fill coffee cans two-thirds full with this batter. Cover tightly either with plastic lids or foil held in place with rubber bands. Set on trivets in a large pot and pour the boiling water into the pot to come halfway up the sides of the coffee cans. Put a top on the pan, but keep your eye on the level of the water. Add more as necessary. Keep the water at a simmer rather than a rolling boil. Steam the bread for three hours. Cut warm bread with a thread by wrapping the thread around the loaf and pulling the two ends past each other. Serve with cream cheese or butter.
HIGH-PROTEIN CHALLAH
yield: 3 loaves of 15 slices each
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| Challah by Anne Swinehart, a master bread maker (using her recipe) |
Ingredients
3 cups stock, warm
2 tablespoons baking yeast
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup oil
4 eggs
9 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon instant nonfat milk powder
Preparation
Melt the butter. Beat the eggs. Grease three loaf pans, Eventually, after two risings, preheat the oven to 350º.
To make
Dissolve the yeast in the warm stock in a large mixing bowl. Add the salt, honey, butter, and oil and stir well. Beat in all but 2 tablespoons of the beaten eggs. Stir the flour and milk powder together. Gradually mix these dry ingredients into the liquid until the mixture is dry enough to begin kneading. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Set the dough in a warm place to rise until doubled. Punch it down, shape it into three loaves, and place these loaves in the oiled pans, or, for more beautiful bread and more traditional challah, divide the dough into three parts and then each part into three more parts. Roll the small parts into strands 12 inches long and 1 1/2 inches thick. Pinch one end of the three strands together and braid them. Place the three braids in the three prepared pans or on baking sheets. Let the loaves or braids rise again until doubled in size. Brush the tops with the remaining 2 tablespoons of beaten egg and bake at 350º for 30-35 minutes.
BAGELS
Ingredients
1 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 package dry yeast
1-2 eggs
3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 quarts water
1 tablespoon sugar
1-2 egg whites
Preparation
Grease a bowl. Scald the milk.
To make
Step 1
Combine the milk, butter, sugar, and salt. Bring the mixture to wrist-warm temperature (between 105º and 115º) and add the yeast to it. When the yeast has dissolved (about 3 minutes), add the eggs and the flour. Knead this soft dough about 10 minutes. If the dough is too soft to handle, add more flour. Set the dough in the greased bowl and let it rise in a warm place, free of drafts, until doubled in size.
Step 2
Punch the dough down and divide it into 18 pieces. Roll each piece into a 7-inch rope, tapered on both ends. Wet the ends to help them seal; then form the ropes into rings, pinching the ends together. Set the rings on a floured board to rise for another 15 minutes.
Preparation
Bring the 2 quarts of water and 1 tablespoon of sugar almost to boiling. Preheat oven to 400.
Step 3
Drop the rings, one at a time, into the near-boiling water-sugar solution. As the bagels surface, turn them over and cook another 3 minutes, then take each one out and place it on an ungreased baking sheet. Brush with beaten egg while. Bake at 400º for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and crisp.
Variations
After brushing the bagels with egg white, you could sprinkle on sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or coarse salt. For cheese bagels, add 1/2 cup grated cheese (Asiago, cheddar, e.g.) to the dough with the flour, and dust the top with extra cheese before baking.
ESALEN ED TAYLOR'S BIG SUR BROWN BREAD
yield: 4 5x9-inch loaves
Step 1
Ingredients
7 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
6 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups rye flour
1/2 cup warm water
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons yesat
5 1/2 cups warm water
1 tablespoon dark molasses
2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups Keenraw sugar (brand name; a raw sugar)
Preparation
Mix the white, whole wheat, and rye flours together to make one flour mix.
To make
Dissolve the 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 tablespoon of yeast in the 1/2 cup warm water (hot to the wrist). When it gets foamy, add the rest of the warm water and the molasses, oats, and Kleenraw (or other raw) sugar. Add about 5 cups of the flour mix. Beat until smooth (100 times). Cover and place in a warm spot until very bubbly (about 1 hour).
Step 2
Ingredients
The sponge from Step 1
2 tablespoons salt
9 1/2 cups of flour mix from Step 1
To make
Stir down the risen sponge. Add the salt and 1/2 cup of the flour mix. Mix well. Add 9 cups more of the flour mix. Knead the dough until it becomes shiny and small bubbles appear. Cover and let rise in a warm spot until it doubles in size (about 1-1 1/2 hours).
Step 3
Preparation
Grease 4 loaf pans
To make
Punch down the risen dough and knead slightly. Divide into loaves and place in greased pans. Cover and let rise in warm spot until doubled (about 1 hour).
Preparation
Preheat oven to 325º.
To make
Bake bread at 325º or 350º for 1 hour or more. Bread is done when it sounds hollow when tapped on top.
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