Feeling Kneady

All of us have experienced loss.  For long-time cooks, loss often takes the form of an old favorite recipe, mysteriously gone from the collection of index cards or the shoebox of favorites clipped from magazines.  In my life I have lost two that were old standards which I started baking in my 20s, coming up on 40 years ago.  One was for a truly spectacular lime chiffon pie with a crumb crust from Sunset  magazine; the other was for oatmeal bread which was part of a Christmas baking section from the Family Circle Encyclopedia of Cooking, each of the dozen-plus volumes collected week by week as a grocery store bonus.  Somewhere during the dozens of moves I’ve made in my life, some international, I parted with the encyclopedia set, but I swear I wrote that bread recipe down somewhere.  Alas, it seems good and lost.

The last time I lived (and baked) in the mountains it was in a funky cabin at around 6,000 feet in Descanso, outside of San Diego near Cuyamaca State Park.  I baked dozens of loaves of this bread in the old cabin stove, the kind that was raised a good foot and a half off the floor on metal legs.  There’s little better in life than good bread that has cooled as long as you can stand after taking it from the oven, spread with soft butter.  Staff of life and all that.  

We’ve been at our new cabin for a month now.  All the urgent tasks have been accomplished -- furnishing the loft, registering the old Arizona truck in Colorado, making curtains and hanging more artwork.  The essential guests have come and gone (for now).  The pattern of several hours of reading a day is established, the forest is being tended by my husband and his chainsaw, and the dog is on squirrel patrol near the bird feeders.  There’s time to relax, TRULY relax, and my mind seems to be looping back to cherished experiences that I can try to recreate for us...mostly involving food.  

We’re reminiscing on childhood favorites -- my husband’s all time, hands down, number one meal his mom made is boiled hotdogs, fried potatoes, and Van de Kamps (accept no substitute!) pork and beans.  Ohhhkaaaayyyyy.   My mind turns to my Grandma’s peach cobbler (definitely on the menu for this summer), creamy mashed potatoes (or crack potatoes as I call them, and we had them over the weekend...yum!), and even those split hotdogs stuffed with cheese (American no doubt) and wrapped in refrigerated crescent rolls my mom used to make, so good right out of the oven.  

We were running low on bread and I wasn’t up for another trip to town, so today I tried to replicate the oatmeal bread of the lost recipe.  I remembered that you poured boiling water over the oats in the bread bowl to soften them, adding a knob of butter and either honey or molasses and a little salt, leaving it for half an hour or so to meld and cool off a bit.  Once that time was nearly up I added two packets of dried yeast to some warm water, spiking it with a sprinkling of sugar to give the yeast something to eat, and walked away for a few more minutes, fearing that watched yeast would not swell and foam.  Trick worked, and I added the yeasty liquid to the softened oats and other goodies.

Now for the part requiring some muscle.  I added a cup of “high altitude” flour and stirred.  Another cup and stirred...it was harder.  The third cup of flour yielded a stiff dough and after another little sprinkling of flour I abandoned the spoon for my hands.  After working the dough into a ball I turned it out onto the floured countertop and started one of my favorite parts of bread baking -- kneading.

Kneading dough is one of the best cooking experiences you can have.  Let’s face it -- food is a sensualist’s dream.  You look at it, the beauty of the form and color.  You smell it, the savory smell of a roast in the oven or the cinnamon scent of snickerdoodle cookies.  You hear it, the sizzle of bacon in a cast iron skillet.     You taste it, salty, sweet, bitter, sour.  And you feel it, the mouth-feel when you eat it, and with your hands when you prepare it.  And bread making is very hands on.

When first turned out of the bowl, the dough is still a bit crumbly with bits of unincorporated flour clinging to the lumpy surface.  Kneading works in the last of the flour and as you work the dough -- push away, rotate a quarter turn, fold toward you, repeat -- the glutens in the dough begin to form and turn the dough elastic and smooth.  When the dough no longer sticks to your hands and is as smooth and soft as a baby’s backside, you’re done.  Forming the dough into a ball by turning it in on itself, place it top side down in the washed and buttered bread bowl and turn it over.  Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and place it in a warm draft-free place for a couple of hours.  Punch down, divide, form into loaves and place in bread pans.  Bake until the loaves are browned and sound hollow when thumped.  Turn out onto a cooling rack.  Brush with soft butter.  And wait for it to cool; probably the hardest part of baking bread.

Deb’s Lost Oatmeal Bread

1 cup dry oatmeal (I use Coach’s Oats)

1/4 powdered milk

1/2 cup wheat germ

1/4 cup honey or molasses

generous teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 3/4 cup boiling water  

Combine above ingredients in large bowl, stir, leave for half an hour.

two envelopes dried yeast

1/4 cup warm water (105 - 115 degrees)

1/2 teaspoon sugar

Combine above ingredients, stir, and leave to rise and foam for 5 minutes or so -- then add to bread bowl with  lukewarm oatmeal mixture.

Mix in about three cups of flour, one at a time, until stiff dough forms.  Turn out onto floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic and no longer sticky.

Turn in buttered bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place until doubled in size.  Punch down, divide, shape into loaves by turning in on itself, place in bread pans, and let rise halfway in pans.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes (start checking at 35) until bread is brown and sounds hollow to thumping.  Turn onto cooling rack and brush with soft butter.  Cool.  Enjoy!