Friday, January 17, 2014

St. Michael’s Bread

The only hard thing about baking bread is remembering how easy it is. Today I made St. Michael’s bread from the book Recipes from the Portuguese of Provincetown.  By the way, I see this book is available for small money from Amazon. 

This is my go-to bread recipe, but it has been modified over the years.  It calls for dissolving a yeast cake in warm water in which you also dissolve two tablespoons of vegetable shortening.  I always used Crisco. You wanted the water to be warm enough to dissolve the Crisco, but if you got it too hot, you would kill the yeast.  It was always a cliff-hanger to see if the dough would rise. 

I’ve made some notes in my old cookbook.  I now use instant yeast, which I buy it King Arthur Flour.
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/saf-red-instant-yeast-16-oz

It comes in quite a large package, but it keeps in the freezer.  My notes say a scant tablespoon equals a package of yeast, which long ago substituted for the yeast cake.  You just put it in with the dry ingredients. There’s no need to proof it.  Instead of Crisco I now use the same amount of olive oil.  This makes yellower bread with a delicious taste that’s slightly different from the original.  I think it’s better.  Maybe the Portuguese of Provincetown used vegetable shorting, but their ancestors in Portugal used olive oil. 

For the kneading, I use the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid mixer.  I like to knead bread, but the dough used to start out sticky, and I hated getting the residue off the table.  It would clog a brush and ruin a sponge.  Paper towels turned to shreds no matter what brand I used, and I ended up alternating between scraping it and washing the surface. Now, when the dough hook has done its work, I flour the table and knead the dough by hand for a minute or two until it forms a smooth ball.  I actually like kneading bread, but this will do.  Because it’s past the sticky phase when I put it down, all I need to do is brush away the leftover flour. 


From experience I have learned that the recipe’s direction to bake it for 50 minutes at 350° is too long. Today I checked it at 35 minutes. I liked the color and the hollow sound when I thumped the bottom of the loaf.  Then I checked it with an instant-read thermometer just to make sure, and it came out to 180°, which is what I wanted. 

Now there are only two downsides to baking bread.  It’s not a lot of work, but you need to be home when it finishes each of its two risings and when it bakes. Music on the stereo and a good book fill the wait.  A more serious problem is you’re likely to eat more bread than you should before it even cools.



 

Thursday, January 2, 2014

O Christmas Tree


 

 O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,

 Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

Thou blessed our house with woodsy scent

While we grew slowly fatter.

As carols graced our living room

Thy lights adorned our Christmas Eve,

But now that needles strew the rug

It's time thou got the heave.

Sweet nostalgia dewed our eyes

As trinkets old thy boughs bedecked.

Now only in the vacuum bag

Thy odor we detect.

All over are the galas grand,

Both casual and formal.

We move the furniture in place

And things go back to normal.

We rest and read our Christmas books

Surrounded now by quiet.

We sit at table solemnly

Observing careful diet.

While once again in nature thou mayst feel the breezes blow

With fellows up and down the street, bedecked by flakes of snow.

O Christmas Trees O Christmas Trees

How lovely are thy branches,

Now sprawled before colonials,

Victorians, and ranches.