Will - Bread by Mother earth news: our favorite recipes for artisan breads, quick breads, buns, rolls, flatbreads, and more

First published in 2015 by Voyageur Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

2015 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

Text 2015 Ogden Publications

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Digital edition: 978-1-6278-8776-2
Softcover edition: 978-0-7603-4844-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bread by Mother earth news : our favorite recipes for artisan breads, quick breads, buns, rolls, flatbreads, and more / edited by Karen K. Will.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-7603-4844-4 (sc)

1. Bread. I. Will, Karen K. II. Mother earth news.

TX769.B77255 2015

641.815--dc23

2015011952

Acquisitions Editor: Thom OHearn

Project Manager: Caitlin Fultz

Art Director: Cindy Samargia Laun

Cover Design: Amy Sly

Book Design and Layout: Diana Boger

On the front cover: grafvision/Shutterstock

Our Favorite Recipes for

ARTISAN BREADS, QUICK BREADS, BUNS, ROLLS, FLATBREADS, AND MORE

Edited by

KAREN K. WILL

M y dad was the baker in our family when I was a kid. Once a week or so he would be up early in the morning and get the oven going. I would wake up to that smellmaybe the best smell in the worldbaking bread.

He says he baked just because he loved warm, fresh bread, and he couldnt talk Mom into tackling the project. So he would put the dough out to rise one evening a week and then get up early the next morning to bake two or three big loaves of dense, white bread.

It was all part of an idiosyncratic breakfast he loved to make for himself. In fact, my dad still approaches breakfast in his own unique way, with a sense of real reverence for his favorite foods. His preferred breakfast delicacy is a wedge of chocolate cake with chocolate icing covered in boiled pinto beans. Its not for me, but it is better than it sounds.

Dads second favorite morning meal requires a little more preparation.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about bread is the extended, sensuous ritual associated with its creation. Dad started in the evening, preparing the dough and filling the house with the cool, sweet smells of wheat and yeast. Then he would have the bread in the oven before dawn so he could cut and serve it before he took his morning shower.

Just before getting in the shower, he would cut a generous slice of the warm breadmore than an inch thickand pour a big helping of Karo-brand white corn syrup over the slice. Then he would go off to the shower and get dressed for his day at the office.

By the time he was dressed, the warm bread would have completely absorbed the syrup to become an original confection: warm, aromatic, and almost unbearably sweet.

When I was a teenager, the popular opinion on white bread and corn syrup was that they were very unhealthy. In fact they were near the bottom of any list of nutritious foods. It is, I think, a tribute to the inherent wholesomeness of fresh-baked bread that my health-minded father maintains this ritual and keeps a bottle of Karo handy.

At the time of this writing, my father is seventy-nine years old and in extremely good health. Most mornings he has yogurt or oatmeal for breakfast. But I wouldnt be at all surprised to catch him at the table some mornings with an inch-thick slab of white bread drenched in white corn syrup.

The soothing ritual of baking bread; the therapeutic aroma that emanates from the oven; the enjoyment we find in a loaf prepared exactly to our taste; and the butter, jam, bacon drippings, or the corn syrup we slather onthese things have health benefits that are difficult to measure.

Bryan Welch

Publisher & Editorial Director,

Mother Earth News

Author of Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want