to hell with Maryanne

The Chief Taster has this thing where she likes to have a slice of toast, an orange, and a soft-boiled egg for breakfast every day.  Except on weekends, when I'll sometimes make omelets or Dutch babies or muffins or waffles or... something.  Usually, the toast is from a loaf I've made, unless I've been lazy, and just bought her a loaf of multi-grain.  Therein lies my problem: she is a creature of unwavering habit, and I like to play with my food.  And, I guess, hers.  I mean, there are a LOT of bread recipes out there.  Why should I stick to just the one?

I tried something called black bread from one of her books last week.  It was terrible.  We were both unhappily chewing a piece for breakfast when I gave up and threw the rest of the loaf in the garbage.

I did much better this week.  I found a recipe (in one of MY books) called Gingery Whole Wheat Bread.  The doughball was really big even before rising, and (obviously) much larger an hour or so later.  After baking, I was thrilled to see that the loaves were big enough to make lunch sandwiches--and that was before I tried the bread.

I always slice off a heel and eat it fresh from the oven.  She doesn't like the heels (one of the many things about her I'll probably never understand--my brothers and I used to fight over heels.  That's why there's only two of us left).  I spread a little butter on it, intending to have that one slice, then go to the grocery for the berries I needed for dessert that night, but HOLEY MOLY, THAT BREAD.  There's only half a teaspoon of ginger in each loaf, but you can still taste it.  It's just sweet enough to be a great choice for breakfast, but not sweet enough to dissuade me from making sandwiches for lunch (I added lunchmeat and lunchcheese to my grocery list), and that ginger flavor is in every damn bite.  I had another slice, then left before I ate the rest.

Gingery Wholewheat Bread

2 packages (4.5 t) dry yeast
1/2 C lukewarm water
2 C milk
1/2 C molasses
1/2 C butter (I didn't realize until typing this post that I screwed up here; I read the recipe as "1/2 C," but it's really "1/2 stick (1/4 C)."  Also, they used margarine, and I won't buy the stuff.  If you want the bread I made, do what I did.  If you want whatever they made, do that.  Using their amount of butter probably would have kept me from adding the extra flour while kneading, but I'm happy with my choices.)
2 T brown sugar
6 C flour (when I say "flour," I always mean "unbleached all-purpose," unless I say otherwise.  Don't buy self-rising flour.  Just don't.)
2 C whole wheat flour
1 T salt (they said 3 t, because I guess they didn't do the math?)
1 t ginger

1. Combine flours, salt, and ginger in a large bowl.
2. Sprinkle the yeast into 1/2 C water.  Set that aside to dissolve while you put the milk, molasses, brown sugar, and butter (however much you used) in a small saucepan over low heat.  Stir constantly, until everything has melted and blended together. Don't boil it.  Besides making the milk go all funny, it will kill the yeast in the next step.  Most of the blending will happen by stirring, so the heat here is really just to melt the butter.
3. Make a well in the middle of the flour bowl and pour in about half of the milk mixture.  Stir that in, then add the dissolved yeast.  Keep stirring.  Add the rest of the milk mixture.  Things will clump together in big gooey globs (especially if you used twice as much butter, like me).  You can add more flour to get the right consistency, but I usually do that while kneading, so let's move the dough glob onto a clean counter (you can dust it with flour first, if you want.  I don't care.) and knead it for a few minutes.  This is when I added about another 1/4 C of flour, a little at a time, until I was happy with the dough.  If you're a bread baker, you'll know what I mean.  If you're new to this... I promise to make a generic "bread" post sometime, like I did with cookies.  For now, you want to be able to pick up the dough and handle it without it sticking to every damn thing it touches and leaving bits of itself behind.
4. When you're happy with the dough ball, put it in a greased bowl, cover with a towel, and let it rise until doubled in size (about an hour.  Mine went a few minutes longer, because I got caught up in something else.  No big deal.  Bread is much more forgiving than people think.).
5. Grease two 9x5 bread pans.  Punch down the dough, divide in half, and form it into two 9x5 rectangles.  Put 'em in the pans to rest under the towel while the oven preheats to 350F. (This secondary rise is called "proofing."  I let mine go about half an hour, until it looked like they were getting close to the tops of the pans, because I wanted nice, tall loaves.)  Bake for 35-40 minutes.  Brush tops with a little melted butter before removing them from pans to cool on a wire rack.
6. Try, very hard, to not eat all of the bread now.  It will probably make a good sandwich later.  Or maybe toast.