Molasses gives this bread a beautiful golden color without adding too much sweetness.

There are times, of course, when we just can’t be around to hover over the lovely pattern of rising-panning-rising-baking.  But my daughter seems to have become spoiled on home-baked bread, and declares any store-bought sandwich bread to taste “like chicken feed.”  (How does she know what chicken feed tastes like?  She won’t say…).  For such occasions, we have been enjoying a whole wheat quick bread adapted from  King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking that, while not quite as good as our favorite yeasted breads, is still pretty darn tasty. This bread keeps well, and  though there is a little brown sugar and molasses in it, it’s not too sweet, and has a rustic, old-fashioned flavor–it tastes just as good with a nutty cheddar as it does with our homemade peanut butter and blackberry jam.

Yummy Quick Molasses Nut Bread

2 cups whole wheat flour  (traditional whole wheat, or white wheat both work beautifully)
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (one stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup molasses
1 1/4 cups milk
2 tablespoons orange juice
1-1 1/4 cups chopped nuts (walnuts are yummy in this recipe, but go ahead and experiment)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, soda, and salt.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time.  Beat in the molasses.  Add 1/2 the flour mixture, then about half the milk, then the rest of the flour, then the last of the milk and the orange juice, mixing until moistened after each addition.  If using a stand mixer, scrape the sides of the bowl as needed throughout the entire  process.  Stir in the nuts.

Transfer the batter to a buttered or oiled 9 x 5 loaf pan.  Bake in a 300 degree oven for an hour and 10-15 minutes.  Check the bread in an hour–if it seems to be too dark on top, cover it lightly with foil for the last bit of baking. Let the finished bread sit 20 minutes before removing it from the pan, then allow it to cool completely before slicing.

The long baking time at this lower temperature allows the bran to become thoroughly moistened by the wet ingredients, making a wonderful, tender bread.  I love a hunk of this bread toasted plain with my morning coffee.  It’s dense, so slice thinly for sandwiches.  Enjoy!

It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.
–Mma Ramotswe, The #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Pumpkins are one of my absolute favorite things to grow.  When people visit my garden and see the long vines with their ripening green and orange orbs, they often say, “I would grow pumpkins, but I don’t have enough room.”  A common misconception!  Unlike a summer squash, say a zucchini, that takes up a whole world of garden, sugar pie pumpkin vines can be planted at the corner of a bed, then their vines trained around the edges.  When the summer garden begins its descent into depressing barren brown-ness, the pumpkin vines will be graced with gorgeous orange fruits that turn our minds to cozy things–tea during a rainstorm, books by the fire, and of course pumpkin pie.  Preferably with hazelnut-rum whipped cream.

For best color, nutrition, and storage, pick your pumpkins when they are fully mature.  The stems should start to feel corky rather than moist and fleshy, the fruits should be full sized, and the skins should be rather tough–it will be hard to poke your thumbnail into it.  Cut them leaving several inches of stem, and keep them in the garden for a few days to “cure” before preserving.

Even if you didn’t grow pumpkins this year, you might find it satisfying to choose some pretty ones from your local farm and preserve them for winter cooking.  When you see the gorgeous yellow-orange puree you produce, you will never want to open a can of that brown Libby’s stuff ever again.

Pumpkins are not very acidic, so they cannot be safely canned in a water bath.  If you want beautiful canned pumpkin puree, you will have to pressure can it, and since I have a subrational fear of pressure canners, I freeze my pumpkin, which works perfectly well, even if it isn’t as pretty.  (For directions on pressure canning pumpkin, check the indispensable Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.)

There are two ways to prepare the pumpkin for pureeing:  roasting or boiling.  To boil, use a sharp serrated knife to cut the pumpkin into halves or quarters, scoop out the innards, save a little handful of seeds for next year’s planting, and the rest for roasting (the innards and a few skins can go to the chickens), then cut into large chunks and pop into a big pot of boiling water until soft enough to poke easily with a fork. Let cool, then skin.  The combination of a tough-skinned squash and me wielding a giant sharp knife strikes fear into the heart of my long-suffering husband (with good reason, I admit), so I personally use the roasting method:  use a fork to poke holes into the skins, then pop the pumpkins into a 350 degree oven for up to an hour, until soft.  Protected by their skins, the pumpkins are actually steamed, rather than roasted.  Let cool until easily handled.  Slice the fruits and remove the innards.  The skins will slip right off, and the pumpkins will slice like butter.  Many hands make light work, and it was fun to prepare pumpkins alongside my daughter.  Claire de-gunked the pumpkins and saved the seeds, while I sliced, both of us singing along with Abigail Washburn and her banjo.

One way or another, you now have soft, skinned pumpkin, ready to puree.  The intrepid may use a potato masher, but the rest of us will prefer a blender or food processor.  Having tried all three ways, I go with the food processor.  The processing should be easy, and the fruit should quickly puree into a soft, smooth, orange puddingy mixture.  If it seems to take forever, the pumpkin may still be too hard.  Even if you roasted it to begin with, hard pumpkin chucks can be popped back into boiling water if need be.

The prettiest color of orange...

Freeze in containers or freezer bags.  Our freezer space is limited, so I use bags because they take up less room.  Be sure to label the containers with the contents, date, and amount stored, and fill them in the amounts you most often use.  I pack most of mine with one cup of puree for pumpkin bread, and a few with two cups for my favorite pie recipe.  For easy storage in a crowded freezer, smash the bags flat, pile them on a cookie sheet, and freeze into a nice, stackable shape.

Be sure to save a cup of two for a batch of fresh bread!  Here’s my favorite recipe–all spices are “to taste,” and Claire, like many children,  prefers it with fewer spices in general.  I have grown to enjoy a nice gingery flavor alongside squash, but the cinnamon and ginger measurements could be reversed if you prefer.  This recipe works  well with any kind of winter squash, yams, or sweet potatoes, but I like it best with nice orange pumpkin.  If you use white whole wheat flour, the bread is even better the day after baking; the germ will have melded with the moisture of the pumpkin, the milk, and the spices.  So lovely.

Tangled Nest Pumpkin Bread

Whisk together:
1 1/2 cups flour (white whole wheat, all-purpose, or a mixture)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1-1/1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves

In a liquid measuring cup stir together:
1/3 cup milk (or substitute water, soy, or rice milk)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In a large bowl, or the bowl of your mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat until creamy:
6 tablespoons butter, preferably unsalted

Add, and then beat until smooth (about 3 minutes):
1 cup sugar, and 1/3 cup brown sugar (light or dark)

Beat in 2 eggs, one at a time

Add, and beat until just blended:
1 cup of your beautiful pumpkin puree

Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the milk/vanilla mixture.  Beat only as much as necessary, but scrape the bowl sides and bottom as needed to blend all the butter/sugar.

Fold in 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

You can also add a handful of raisins if you don’t mind squishy things hiding in your food.  (If I liked such things, I think I would try golden raisins.)

Spread evenly into a 9×5 greased bread pan, and sprinkle more chopped walnuts or pepitos on top.  Bake in a 350 degree oven, until a tester comes out clean, about an hour.  You may need to put foil over the top to keep it from over-browning in the last 15 minutes of baking.  Let cool in the pan for five minutes before turning out to cool completely.  Meanwhile, luxuriate in the incredible pumpkin-spicy fragrance of your kitchen.

And here’s how we roast seeds:  wash the seeds, remove most of the pumpkin gunk, pat off excess water, and let them air dry on a dish towel for an hour or so.  Saute in a little butter, soy sauce, and splash of worcestershire sauce until the liquids start to cling to the seeds.  Transfer to a baking sheet and roast at 350 until beginning to plump and brown–somewhere between 7 and 15 minutes.

They are best eaten warm from the oven.  So delicious!  And, as Mma Ramotswe says, they’re a reminder of the simple, most peaceful, most essential things in life.

Favorite pumpkin recipe?  Please share!

My recipe is adapted from one of my favorite go-to cookbooks, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison.  It’s a fun one for kids, with lots of hands-on time.

Pita Bread

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast  (quick rise is fine–whatever you have)
1 teaspoon honey
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the griddle
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour (coarsely-ground, if you have some)
2 cups bread flour (or all purpose unbleached white, or white whole-wheat)

In a mixing bowl, stir together the warm water with the yeast and honey, and let it sit until bubbly, about 10 minutes.

Stir in the salt and olive oil, then add the whole-wheat flour and beat until smooth.  Add the rest of the flour incrementally, until the dough is too thick to stir, then turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and supple.  You may need to add a bit more flour.  Turn it into an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel, and set it aside to double in bulk, which will take about 50 minutes to an hour.

Punch down the risen dough, and divide it into ten pieces, rolling each into a ball.  Cover these and let them rest for about 15 minutes.

Roll a few of the balls out into 1/4 inch circles while you heat a seasoned cast iron fry pan or griddle on high.  When your pan is good and hot, reduce the heat to medium, brush the surface of the pan with olive oil, and put one of the pitas in the middle.  Let it sit for 30 seconds, then turn it over.  The cooked surface should be mottled, a little bubbly, and turning golden.  So pretty.  If it’s still all flour-colored, turn up the heat a little, and leave it on a bit longer before turning over. Let the other side cook for 30 seconds as well.  Put the finished pita in a cloth-lined basket, re-brush the pan with olive oil, and repeat with the next pita.  I usually roll the rest of the balls out while the first pitas are cooking–roll, cook, roll, cook.  There’s plenty of time in between.

You may notice at this point that what we have is actually a flatbread sort of thing, rather than a real pocket pita.  It’s true that the griddle method does not reliably result in puffed pocket pitas.  For that, you need to bake them in the oven.  I just think  pita recipes come out moister, tastier and so much prettier on the stovetop.  You can stack, scoop, and wrap food in these breads.  But if ultra-puffiness is what you’re after, try this:  put a baking stone on the center rack and heat the oven up as high as it will go.  You can bake three or four pitas at once, depending on the size of your stone.  When they start to puff, count to thirty and remove them.  You need only a few minutes of oven-time, apart from pre-heating–still a good summer solution.  Enjoy!

Yummy fresh pitas with a couscous salad featuring the last of our garden snow peas. The salad dressing is good olive oil with lemon juice, garlic, coriander, and a little dijon, salt, and pepper.

]]> http://thetanglednest.com/2009/07/homemade-pita-cool-bread-for-hot-days/feed/ 2 http://thetanglednest.com/2009/06/macbooks-and-grain-mills-the-tangled-nest-school-of-reformed-techno-luddites/ http://thetanglednest.com/2009/06/macbooks-and-grain-mills-the-tangled-nest-school-of-reformed-techno-luddites/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:32:11 +0000 lyanda http://thetanglednest.com/?p=888 Confession:  I’m now writing my blog about simple, handmade, sustainable domestic arts from my brand new, super-shiny MacBook Pro, in all its MacBook Pro glory, including the celebrated “precision aluminum unibody enclosure.”  I labor under the fantasy that The Tangled Nest suddenly looks brighter and more beautiful to everyone, not just me.  I love this computer.

Still, ironies and ambivalences hover.  I spent half an hour this morning shopping on the MacBook’s “advanced glossy digital  display” for a hand-cranked grain mill.  I expected to find such things on earth-motherish-foodie-bread-nerd websites, but as often as not I end up on some so-far-right-it’s-left-stockpile-now-for-the-apocalypse website, where the tab for the grain mill page is right next to the tab for the “guns/ammo” page.

Sometimes I feel like two different people in one body.  Tom says, “That’s why I married you, honey–you’re a floor wax and a dessert topping.”

This is my dream grain mill–the gorgeous, solid cast-iron Diamant Mill from Poland.

Isn’t it lovely?  It  costs more than my new MacBook Pro.  I will probably be settling for the Family Grain Mill.  Everything Kitchens in Missouri has an unbeatable price (and no guns), and the FGM has an optional electric base.  So when I’m tired from typing on the computer, I won’t have to hand-crank the mill!

One day early on this school year, Claire came home and said, “Mommy, you bake the bread for my sandwich, and we use our homemade jam.  We should mash up some peanuts with a rock or something instead of buying peanut butter, so the whole thing will be homemade!”  Well, that’s a girl after my own heart!  We haven’t bought peanut butter since (though we haven’t quite resorted to rock-mashing either).  It’s super-easy to make peanut butter, costs a little less than buying good store-bought, and tastes miles better than the best gourmet peanut butter you’ve ever tasted.  It’s fresher, nuttier, toastier, just better.  It takes five minutes, and kids old enough to run the food processor can easily make it by themselves.

We don’t usually measure the ingredients, but we did this time so we could share some semblance of a recipe:

• 2 cups toasted Valencia peanuts (available in bulk at most food coops, Whole Foods, and many grocery stores–organic nuts will be around three bucks a pound).  If you buy raw peanuts, toast them at 350 degrees for 20 minutes before making your PB.

• 4-7 tablespoons of peanut oil (canola works fine if you don’t have peanut oil on hand)

• Kosher salt to taste

Put the nuts in the small bowl of the food processor, fitted with the metal blade (or the blender).  Add 4 tablespoons of oil, and blend until rather smooth, though the butter will remain somewhat grainy.  If dry, add more oil, a tablespoon at a time.  You’ll probably use about 6.

Add salt to taste, but be careful–the kosher salt will make the PB taste divine, but a pinch goes a long way!

Decant into a jar, and refrigerate.  SO yummy!

For a transformative PB & J experience, try it with the Best Sandwich Bread Recipe Ever, and your favorite homemade jam.  It’s also great on apples, or straight out of the jar on a spoon (not that I would know…).

I love how pleased my daughter is to announce that her sandwich is entirely homemade.  We’ve come such a long way from the days when it was a stigma to have lovely, homemade, brown bread, because all the middle-class kids had Wonderbread.  Enjoy.

Cracked Wheat Walnut Cider Bread

My biological clock started ticking in college.  I was, after all, of child-bearing age in body, if not in mind, and I’d always had maternal tendencies.  I didn’t want a child yet.  I just wanted to give birth.  Whenever this compulsion became overwhelming, I baked bread.  It was the perfect psychological antidote, providing my hormone-ridden self with a life-giving activity and a rising, belly-like substance, without any need to bed down some hapless frat boy, or produce an actual baby.  Instead, I produced unbearably warm and delicious loaves, and topped them with butter and jam.  Heaven. (Now that I am a real mother, I think the birth/bread analogy breaks down quite quickly–nothing compares to giving birth.  But I still think baking bread might be the next best thing.)

Like many neophyte breadbakers, my first manual was The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book–a beautiful and useful primer, with those homey woodcut illustrations that make you feel hippy, happy, and earth mother-ish, as if your own kitchen is the peaceful center of a gardeny earth.  And again like many neophyte breadbakers, I made the ruinous decision to begin my career with Laurel’s “Basic Whole Wheat Bread.”  It seemed like a good idea, being the starter recipe in a section that promised “tender, light, moist, and delicious loaves that speak eloquently of the goodness of the wheat itself.”  I mixed, I kneaded, I tested, I watched the bread rise. I punched, shaped, and baked.  I sat aflutter with excitement over the fragrant wafting goodness that filled my tiny apartment.  And then I brought it forth.  My bread brick.  Utterly disheartened, I tried to salvage something of the experience by sending my leaden bread into the food chain.  I hammered off bits to feed  the ducks in “Lakum Duckum,” the Whitman College pond, but the bread morsels were so dense that they sunk to the bottom before the ducks could get them (try as they might), at which point I started to cry.   It may seem silly to apply a moralistic label to something as innocuous as bread, but let us not mince words.  Laurels Basic Whole Wheat Bread recipe is evil.  It will break your teeth and, worse,  your spirit.  You will think you are a failure, but it’s not you.  It’s this bad, bad recipe.  (I still recommend the rest of the book, though!)

I might  have given up on bread altogether, if not for my friend Susan’s mother, who produced beautiful, healthy loaves with the seeming effortlessness born of long experience.  I told her about my bread.  “Oh honey-baby, ” she crooned, as she wrapped her arms about my neck, “don’t ever make Laurel’s Basic Bread.”  In the intervening decades (oh dear, is that plural?) I’ve grown as a baker.  There have been loaves of agony and loaves of ecstasy.  I want to share a bit of the ecstasy.

The best sandwich bread recipe I have ever found is the Cracked Wheat Walnut Cider Loaf in Leslie Mackie’s Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook.

It’s a relatively simple, one-day, two-rise bread, with no starter.  It’s textured, tasty, nourishing, loved by ten-year-old daughters and husbands, and is long-lasting (one loaf will stay fresh enough for the whole school week’s worth of sandwiches).  It’s not a crusty, serve-with-soup-or-pasta artisan bread.  It’s for slicing, and topping with peanut butter and jam, or cheese and tomatoes.  As my long-suffering husband (a carnivore living with two vegetarians, and enduring a wife who makes him tofurkey-sprout sandwiches) puts it, “I’d eat anything on this bread.”  My, is it good.   With the publisher’s blessing, here it is:

3/4 cup cracked wheat
1 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups walnuts
1 1/4 cup apple cider (or apple juice seems to work just fine)
1 1/2 teaspoons dried yeast
2 tablespoons honey
1 cup course whole-wheat flour (plus a little more for sprinkling on top)
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup canola oil

1.  In a small bowl, cover the cracked wheat with the boiling water.  Stir until moistened, and let sit for 10 minutes, allowing the water to be absorbed.

2.  Spread the walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet, and toast for 10 minutes in a 350 F oven.  Let them cool, then chop coarsely, and set aside.

3.  Heat the apple cider until it’s just warm to the touch, and pour it into the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add yeast and honey, and whisk until the yeast is dissolved.  Let sit for five minutes.  Add the plumped cracked wheat, flours, salt, and canola oil.  Using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed for about a minute to combine ingredients, then mix on medium speed for 10 minutes (don’t leave your mixer unattended–it could “walk” over the edge of the counter!). The dough will form a loose ball at the end of the hook.  Add walnuts and mix for two more minutes.  (If mixing by hand, stir with a wooden spoon until ingredients come together, then knead by hand for about ten minutes.  Add walnuts, and knead until they are evenly distributed.)

4.  Transfer dough to an oiled, medium bowl, and cover with plastic wrap.  Let it proof in a warm room (it should be 70-75 degrees) for two hours.  The dough will almost double in size.

5.  Pull the dough onto a floured surface, and punch it down with your hands to release any air bubbles.  Form the dough into  rectangle, about 12 x 6 inches, with the long side facing you.  Fold the short ends onto the top, meeting in the middle, then starting with the end closest to you, roll the dough away from you into a tight log.

6.  Place the loaf into an oiled 9x 5 inch loaf pan (if you have one of the taller, 4 inch high pans, that works best.  Mine is the usual 3 inches high, and that’s fine).  Cover with plastic wrap, and let proof for an hour at room temperature.  The loaf will rise a bit beyond the top of the pan.  While it’s proofing, preheat the oven to 385 F.

7.  Remove the plastic, and dust the top with course whole-wheat flour (I like to use a little sifter).  Place the pan on the center rack and bake for about 50 minutes, until the loaf is medium brown on top.  Cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the pan to release the loaf, and invert the pan to remove the bread!

The toasted walnuts lend a little nutty-sweetness. My pan is only three inches high, so the bread rolls over the top quite a lot. I rather like how it looks this way.

This all might seem time consuming, but the mixing takes only about twenty minutes, and I find that the proofing and baking of bread lends a gentle rhythm to my day–breaking up the time into sensible segments that somehow allow me to accomplish more than I would otherwise.  And there are few things I do that are so simple, yet make my beloved co-inhabitants (not to mention myself)  so very happy.   Enjoy.

When in Seattle, be sure to visit Macrina Bakery!  The rest of the cookbook is completely wonderful, too.

(Don’t have time for a yeasted bread? Here’s my quick bread recipe, that also works great for sandwiches).