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.