Another bread shot

This time as toast. It's still not a great shot, but I wasn't planning on posting about this bread yet. Might as well, though. I made the sourdough honey wheat bread from the Panera cookbook, but I added a cup of my own multigrain blend. I based the blend on this one from the King Arthur store; by shopping the bulk bins at the Coop, I was able to make the same blend for about half the price (and I could leave out the poppy seeds - for me, they don't really add anything other than the potential for embarrassment when they get stuck in my teeth). I also used King Arthur's white whole wheat flour, which I can get from the Coop bulk bins for $.59 a pound (more than 40% off the normal retail price).


Dan loved the bread; while I thought it was tasty, I'm not completely satisfied with it. It was very, very dense, and I'm not sure whether that's due to too much kneading or not enough rising time. It did make great toast, as pictured above; I had some breakfast the other morning alongside a bowl of nonfat plain yogurt with a touch of blackberry jam and some canned peaches.

One batch of dough makes two loaves; I put the other half in the freezer (before the first rise, per the cookbook directions) and will probably bake it tomorrow. I'm going to keep experimenting with this recipe and others until I find the perfect balance. One thing I am satisfied with: the price. I can make my own bread for about $1.00 a loaf, which is a good deal better than the $4.oo or $5.oo that I would pay for the artisan bread that I love. Also, multigrain sourdough, my bread of choice, is hard to find in this area; a lot of bakeries only make it once a week or periodically as a monthly/seasonal special.

Out of the Box, Week 4

We were in such a rush last Thursday to catch the last bus down to Boston that I didn't photograph the produce before we split it up. We took some zucchini, garlic scapes, parsley, and lettuce to Boston for Zach and Maria, and left some zucchini, a summer squash, garlic scapes, turnip greens, and kohlrabi here. I know Maria made zucchini bread with her zucchini. We used our zucchini, along with some sugar snap peas left over from week 3, to make a green risotto.

Last night, we had a friend over for dinner, but we also faced the challenge of trying to use up everything in our fridge, since we're leaving today on a ten-day trip. I sauteed the turnip greens with the garlic scapes in a little olive oil and steamed the remaining zucchini and summer squash. For the main course, I made lentils and brown rice, using Rebecca Blood's recipe, but I added a generous amount of garam masala spice mix. I also served the lentils with thinly sliced onions fried in a little butter and a scoop of plain nonfat yogurt. It might sound strange but the addition of those two condiments takes the meal from something simple, solid, and hearty to a complex and irresistible treat. The sweetness of the onions and the tang of the yogurt against the earthiness of the lentils makes for a surprising luxurious flavor.

For weeks five and six, we'll be out of town, so we've offered our box of veggies to the house that we belonged to in college. I've asked them to let me know what they used them for and to take pictures if possible, so hopefully I'll have an update when I get back. In the meantime, I'm spending the next ten days in New York, North Carolina, and Cape Cod, for a family reunion bookended by two weddings!

I won't be doing much cooking, although at the family reunion, I will be cooking one night. Hopefully that will be preceded by a visit to a coastal North Carolina farmer's market. I'm hoping for peaches. I will also be eating out a lot, so I'll post pictures and reviews in the last week of July, once I'm back here.