To the day

The lucky girl that I am, I was recipient of some spectacular flowers this afternoon, which arrived bearing the simple sentiment of "Happy Thursday." The sherbet-hued blooms brought a smile to my face, and an infusion of tropical warmth to our snow-blanketed house.

As my hands are a bit full this week, I am without a story to tell today. But at least I can pass on the hope that your day is a wonderful one. Cheers.

Curing what ails me

Important note: My sincere apologies; when this was first posted, there was an error in the quantity of milk used - it should be 2 cups. If anyone did make the recipe with the incorrect amount of liquid, I hope you did not fret too much; bake the oatmeal for an additional 15 or so minutes. The bottom oats will be a bit softer, but some of the excess liquid will have absorbed. Serves me right for attempting to write while my head was shrouded in cold symptoms!

I am feeling more than a tad under the weather. I know that a lot of people, including my dear husband, are in the same circumstance just now, but even company is not making this misery go away any faster.

The company is appreciated though, as Sean and I are spending our time comparing analogies to our symptoms. At last count he was mired in a rather fog-shrouded bog, whilst I was enjoying the company of particularly-prodigious pachyderms as they perched upon my head.

I am not so sick as to require reinforcements to help me wrangle the boys or make it through my day, but I am sick enough that said wrangling sometimes sets my mind aswirl and by the end of the day I am reaching for the coziest of sweaters and the softest of pillows. I am not so sick that I did not get dressed today, but I am sick enough that when I noticed my socks did not exactly match, I shrugged my shoulders and pulled them on anyway.

I had meant to write about bread baking and chocolate cakes and other such interesting things. But to be honest, I am not in the mood for food just now. I have little appetite, and when I do eat, that's not the food I am wanting - I want warmth, and I want it in a bowl.

Wandering about the kitchen this morning, I set about making a pot of steel cut oats; hearty and filling, a regular winter breakfast for us. I took pause however, and thought of baked oatmeal instead. This is the goose down duvet of breakfasts; stewed fruit is tucked beneath a layer of soft, pillowy oats, with a thin, crisp crust atop. My banana and blueberry version is like eating banana bread combined with a fruit crumble, with the best qualities of a breakfast bar and oatmeal cookie thrown in for good measure.

The potent mix of spice and fruit filled the kitchen with a soothing fug that brought appetites to the table. Textured and toothsome, the oatmeal was greedily spooned out and gobbled up, warming both our hearts and bellies. It was just what the doctor ordered.

Be well.

Endnote: If anyone might happen to find me, still in my robe (and possibly mismatched socks) eating this cold out of the fridge (and directly from the dish), please don't judge.

Baked oatmeal with blueberries and banana
Perfect for a cold morning, this baked oatmeal can be served as is or, as I like it, with a splash of extra milk or a dollop of yogurt.

Ingredients
Softened butter for greasing the pan
2 cups large flake rolled oats (not instant)
1/2 cup sliced almonds, lightly toasted
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup pepitas, lightly toasted
2 teaspoons flax seeds
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground clove
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups milk (I use 1%)
1 large egg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon pure maple syrup
2 medium bananas, diced
1/2 cup frozen blueberries (not thawed)
Coarse sugar, optional

Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Lightly grease the inside of a 8" round baking dish (around 2 quart capacity) and set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix together the oats, almonds, brown sugar, pepitas, flax seeds, baking powder, spices and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, almost all of the butter (save about 1 teaspoon for drizzling over the finished dish), vanilla and maple syrup. Set aside.

In the prepared baking dish, spread the diced bananas in an even layer, then scatter the blueberries over top. Pile the oat mixture to cover the fruit, but do not pack too tightly. Carefully pour the wet milk mixture over the oats; it will look as if there is too much liquid, but not to worry, it will be absorbed during baking.

Drizzle over the reserved butter, sprinkle with a scant teaspoon of coarse sugar (or to taste), and bake for 35-40 minutes, until the oatmeal is puffed and set, with a golden brown top.

Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a few minutes, then enjoy.

Makes about 4 hearty servings.

Notes:
• Although I have given measurements, the fruit simply needs to completely cover the base of the baking dish. You might need to adjust your quantities to suit your baking dish. Speaking of which, an 8x8 inch square baking dish can be used in place of the round; the oatmeal will be crisper, though.
• This is one of those recipes that allows for a host of variations; I simply pillaged my pantry for ingredients and went from there. Almost any nuts and an array of fresh and dried fruit would all work here. Some specifically-tasty combinations: grated apple with almonds, bananas, dried cranberries and pecans, blackberries and peaches with almonds, dried figs with pistachios, or diced pears with walnuts. In each case, spices should also be adapted accordingly.

Menu for Hope V update: Marty McCarthy, winner of CA06: The flavours of Canada, please email me at tara[at]sevenspoons[dot]net with your contact information.

Tales from the breadbox, chapter two

Honey-hued and tender, Soft American-style Sandwich Bread, from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Here I go. Again.

It started with chocolate cake, then it was peanut butter cookies. Now, it's sandwich bread.

You see, I'm not one to leave well enough alone. I have fidgety digits, hands that almost twitch at the prospect of fiddling with an idea. An idea will capture my attention, and I find it nearly impossible to let go; even if I attempt to shove it aside to deal with the matter at hand, the idea it will remain, incessantly tugging at the edge of my attention.

Lest I begin a nervous tick, or start yelling at my own brain, I invariably give in to my impulses.

After asking for direction on soft sandwich bread recipes to try, I was offered a myriad of helpful suggestions. Wonderful help, and to be sure there was no way I was going to let the guidance go to waste. So I began baking, first Julia Child's Classic White Bread from Baking with Julia (William Morrow Cookbooks, 1996), then the Soft American-style Sandwich Bread (pictured above) from the fantastic Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007). Both were delicious, each in their own way (more on that in a moment).

What these breads solidified for me was my criticism of Ina Garten's Honey White Bread; too sweet and too eggy. I simply do not like eggs in my sandwich loaves. I like eggs in some breads, Egg Breads to be specific, but those breads I consider a whole other food entirely.

In my standby everyday sandwich breads, I want something milder, subtle but with flavour, appropriate for both savoury and sweet uses and without too much richness. Egged breads have their own place, but in my mind that place is not alongside tuna fish at lunchtime. Your mileage may vary.

Back to the recipes I did like. The Soft American-style Sandwich Bread from Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. With a more modest amount of yeast than some other recipes I have seen, and a longer resting time, this bread had a remarkably deep flavour. The inclusion of melted butter resulted in a crumb that was substantial yet light, yielding but still hearty enough to be sliced cleanly and well-suited as the base for even Dagwood-esque creations. The recipe yields three loaves, I sent some dough home with an especially-cherished friend, and she found it exactly the sort of bread she likes.

My heart, however, was not wholly won over. The aforementioned butter was delicious, but almost too much of a good thing (perish the thought). While I have never been one to shy away from full fat in all its glory, the quantity of fat was again a distraction. It became about the butter, and not about the bread as a whole.

The other strike against this loaf was that I'd made Julia Child's Classic White Bread earlier in the week and I was already rather smitten. I should have known America's grand-dame of gastronomy would have the (almost) perfect recipe. The dough was gorgeous to work with, laminated with less softened butter than the Soft American-style, and sublimely silky. The loaves rose to impressive heights when baked, cresting well over the edge of the pan and sporting a burnished-gold tan. Their texture was spot-on; soft and tender, and slightly springy to the tongue. Most probably attributed to the thorough kneading the dough requires, it was this texture that made this loaf truly exceptional.

But even as I was deeply mired in a blissful state of carbohydrate-induced languor, I had a nagging impulse. An annoying little idea of how I could take this great recipe and (possibly, hopefully) make it better.

After years of eating breads with minimal leaveners and slow rises, I have come to prefer their flavour to that of quicker-risen loaves. Even in my flour-dusted stupor of bready goodness, I could not get past the fact that I could taste the yeast in Child's bread. As such, while I favoued the overall results from her recipe, I still found the longer-rested breads from Hertzberg and Francois, and Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duigud (HomeBaking, Random House Canada, 2003) appealing. Simply put, they had an understated complexity that is lacking in heavily-yeasted breads.

So what to do? Well, although I am no expert on the matter, I am going to attempt an experiment. I am going to combine the elements of all three recipes, to see if I can manage to capture the best traits of each. Possibly this will end in utter disaster, possibly in delicious bread. I'll be sure to share the results.

Oh, and did I mention that I have found the excuse to bake two chocolate cakes for Benjamin's upcoming birthday, just so I can try out another side-by-side comparison?

Neurotic behaviour? Yes. Delicious dividends? Oh yes, very. So how can I complain about that?

Happy baking.

The best thing: sliced bread

Quick to make, pretty tasty to boot - but not the loaf for me; Ina Garten's Honey White Bread.

What can I say that has not already been said in the adoration of bread?

To many, good bread is the cornerstone of their idea of good food. It is a basic staple of life, one that manages to not only nourish the body, but also inspires passion in the soul. The process, the crust, the crumb, the aroma, the texture, the colour, the taste ... each and every aspect of bread, its ingredients, its making, and its consumption, has been examined and often exalted.

I will not presume to think that I could add any more eloquence to its chorused praise; instead, I can only speak of how bread and its baking has become a part of the rhythm of our days.

As we are a family of bread lovers, I bake bread. To be specific, I bake bread often. Every few days, I am dusted pale with flour as I set about putting up some dough. I have made naan, I have made yeasted crescents laminated with butter, I have made soft and open-crumbled breads meant for sopping up soups and stews. I have made hearty, nubbly-textured seeded rolls. I have made foccaccia, both savoury and sweet. I have explored the personalities of rye, whole wheat and flax, of oat bran and wheat germ.

But most often, I make this. That is what my husband and I consider our bread, my variation on Jim Lahey's No Knead Bread. Yes, that bread, the one that seemed to set the entire food community a-baking in late 2006. Our version has bit of extra flour to suit the size of our cocotte, and a bit of extra salt to best suit our tastes. We have tried different flours to perfect our brand and blend. I make it without a specific measurement of water, as through our long and loving relationship I have learned the quirks of the dough's texture well enough to determine by eye how much is needed. It is not very difficult to make, but it is very rewarding.

Oh, and despite its name, I do knead it, just a bit, so that it springs back ever-so-slightly before its last rise. Every time I make it I still have a slight swell of pride at the thought that something so satisfying could come from my oven.

It is a staple, a without-thought routine of our day-to-day. This bread has often made command performances at extended family events, in its original form and multiple grain variations.

Which brings me to my dilemma. While I am more than happy to munch on a (generous) slice of this crusty boule, there does come an occasion where only sandwich-style bread will do. Pleasantly squidgy, the grocery-store classic is the stuff of many a childhood peanut butter and jelly lunch, of open-faced, gravy-soused hot turkey sandwiches made with Thanksgiving's leftovers, and the basis of a perfect grilled cheese. (Nigella Lawson specifically encourages its use for her Mozzarella in Carrozza.) There is a familiar comfort to its blandness, a charm in its yielding texture.

My trouble is, as much as this sort of bread is a standard in my memory, it is not one in my home. I just cannot seem to find a recipe that I adore. I like the Soft Sandwich Bread, American Style from Homebaking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World (Random House, 2003) by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. I have made it rather often, with our eldest son Benjamin taking delight in the loaves as they rise on a sunny windowsill. It a pre-fermented starter called a biga, which adds a deeper complexity to the final product. But, as delicious as this bread is, it did not stop me from trying my hand at other versions.

My most recent attempt was Ina Garten's Honey White Bread, from Barefoot Contessa at Home (Random House, 2006). My affection for Garten's recipes is nothing new; and this one looked a treat. Garten's recipe left most of the work to a stand mixer, with minimal hands-on effort required. And although I do enjoy a bit of kneading, it seemed novel to allow the machine to do the heavy labour. After a whirl around the mixer, it took only a few turns for the dough turn silken under hand. Into the buttered bowl it went, rising up enthusiastically after an hours rest. I punched it down, formed two generous loaves and waited again. I was convinced that Garten's assurance of "foolproof good bread" would deliver me to sandwich nirvana. But alas, I was left unsatisfied.

Now that is not to say that this is not a good bread. In fact, I am sure that many people would hazard to say that it is great. After baking, the loaves emerged bronzed and beautiful, with a proud, Dromedarian hump. When sliced, they were soft, pleasantly dense, with an even-textured and tight crumb.

Where I was disappointed was the taste. Maybe it is just me, but while I appreciate the relative brevity of its preparation (just under three hours from start to finish), the amount of leavener and honey used to achieve that speed were all-too-evident in its sweet, yeasty flavour. This, coupled with the richness of egg yolks and butter, resulted in a bread that would surely be perfect as a substitute for challah or brioche for pain perdu or summer pudding, but seemed distractingly-sweet when eaten alone. It just was not what I was looking for.

And so, it was back to my boule for us and back to the recipe books for me. And although there is a half a loaf in our breadbox just now, I am still thinking of the perfect sandwich loaf. I am more than open to suggestion, and any guidance would be appreciated and welcomed.


Honey White Bread
From the book Barefoot Contessa at Home by Ina Garten.

The recipe can be found online.