Tuesday, October 18, 2005
It's not just another nice loaf of bread, dear friends. It is indeed a nice loaf of bread, but it is also the first bread I ever learned how to bake, under the close eye and proto-bakerina hand of my mother. When I was five, my mom acquired a copy of the then-brand-spanking-new, now-classic Vegetarian Epicure. Among the lovely things* we found in this book was a recipe for oatmeal bread that called for a large potato, boiled, crushed, combined with butter and milk until it was perfectly smooth and lump-free, and blended into a mix of flour, rolled oats, yeast, a little sugar, a pinch of ginger, salt and some of the water used to boil the potato. I didn't know then that the potato and ginger were what are known in French kitchens as trucs, little tricks that yield big dividends in the finished bread. I just knew, with my five-year-old certainty, that taking all this stuff and turning it into bread was really, really neat. It still is.
*One of the other lovely things in this book is a recipe for pumpernickel bread, which Ms. Thomas calls "Monday Pumpernickel," because if you start the week with a slice of it, then Monday won't look so bad, and you'll be fortified to get through the rest of the week. I have made other pumpernickel recipes that were more suited to my palate, but the Monday pumpernickel gladdens my heart like the others don't, simply because I love the idea of a bread that can lighten your workweek gloom and give you a nice hit of complex carbohydrates and protein at the same time.
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Bakerina at 11:49 PM in
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Mmmmmmm that bread looks amazing. I wish I wasn’t such a retarded baker, LOL. Any time I try to make anything with yeast it’s a disaster.
I guess I’ll just have to come over to your house. 
Oh, yes, I love the illustrations and the waxing eloquent in the bread section. (Because we all have a wood fired cast iron stove and a serene looking cat on hand when we are baking, don’t we?)
My favorite, though, are her suggestions for post meal snacks to accompany the evening’s marijuana.
Ahhh, the sweet bread of youth. Nothing like it.
vicki
Hopefully you will take this in the spirit of the season:
BRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDD! BBBBRRRRREEEEEEEAAAADDDDD!
I mean, BBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRAAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNNNSSSSS!
yep, you could even derail zombie tastebuds with those fine bread pics
That looks wonderful. What is the ginger supposed to do?
And have you tried the oatmeal toasting and sandwich bread that’s on the back of the King Arthur Bread Flour bag? I just did and I am in love with it. As you know, my bread-baking is still kind of touch-and-go, but I had great success this time.
The fact that you’re baking bread again is a ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak world.
Well, gosh, thanks, everybody, you little luvvies, you. 
Jamie, to answer your question, the ginger is supposed to help improve the yeast activity. I had always thought that was a bit of a baking urban legend, but Shirley Corriher published a table in Cookwise that showed the effects of various spices on raised goods. If I were a better bakerina, I would get up and pull Cookwise off the shelf and quote the exact results, but alas, tonight I am not that better bakerina. Tomorrow, perhaps. I have not tried the recipe on the back of the King Arthur bag, but considering that everything I have ever made under their auspices has turned out wonderful, I’m sure that this bread is pretty great, too.
You are all the bakerina we could ever ask for. 
Thanks!
I just found your blog via Average Jane’s blogroll. I had to stop and comment though because I was incredibly touched by the remembering the first bread you ever baked with your mom. I do too...not this one though. It did make me want to drag my kids into the kitchen and drag out my mother’s cookbook and make that bread with them.
Pictures were great too but I am currently suffering from lack of bread...for some reason we have not had real actual bread this week. Tortillas, rice, potatoes. NO BREAD.
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Mmmmmmm that bread looks amazing. I wish I wasn’t such a retarded baker, LOL. Any time I try to make anything with yeast it’s a disaster.
I guess I’ll just have to come over to your house.