Thursday, May 15, 2008

Bread

I've been reading Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food. Here is his basic premise: Eat humble (non-processed) foods without additives or preservatives. Eat mainly vegetables. And not too much.
He also says we shouldn't eat anything with more than five ingredients and we shouldn't eat food with ingredients we can't pronounce. Hmmmm. That pretty well eliminates this bread I've been eating for 30 years.

Because it's got more than five ingredients and has some I can't pronounce.


So whilst shopping with these ideas floating through my head I picked up some whole wheat flour and yeast. Way back in the dark ages when we lived on our boat and couldn't get good bread I used to make our bread. I remembered that it wasn't difficult but just required a little baby sitting. I dug around in the recipe box and actually found my old recipe card.


So I whipped up a batch and set it to rise.


Wow, look at that! I guess I kind of forgot to check on it. But no big deal, I just punched it down, divided it into three loaves, kneaded and shaped two loaves and plopped them into the pans.

Then I took one loaf and stretched it out flat, covered it with cinnamon and brown sugar and rolled it up before putting it in the pan.


After another rising and baking look what we ended up with. I'd almost forgotten how much fun it is to make bread. Now, does it have five, six, or seven ingredients? I know you have to count whole wheat flour, salt and oil, but do you count the honey and molasses as one or two, and do you count the yeast and water?


However you count it, I'm sure it's better for us than the other stuff. And it's delicious too.

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