Survival Sunday 21: What is Loaf?

I. Love. Bread.

Not as much as Satoshi Kojima of New Japan Pro Wrestling, but I really, really like it and consider myself a member of Bread Club 4 Loaf.

That's right - this guy. He loves his bread.

Like, really, really loves bread.

So I really love bread.

I just suck at making it.

So this week, I'd like to talk about various breads and see if there's any interest in me experimenting. Bear in mind that I'm terrible at bread and don't always have the kitchen to myself, so I can make no promises. I'll also try to keep the choices limited - after all, I'm not going to start myself on a difficult bread when there are easier ones to attempt!!!

1) Anadama Bread

A tasty New England treat!

This bread is amazing when warm and spread with melting butter. With hints of molasses and memories of cold nights in a warm kitchen, surrounded by family with no means of escape... er... holiday cheer! It's a delicious bread, and one that has a lot of history in my family. I doubt I'd be making it in a Dutch oven, which is how that loaf is round, but I'm fairly confident that I could, eventually, make it right.


2) Boston Brown Bread

Yeah, that stuff you can get in a can from A&W...

I'm not a huge fan of brown bread (even less so with raisins), but it's still bread and it's still good with butter on a cold day. It's also good with baked beans, and I should really put a recipe for that most sacred of New England traditions up on here before too long. If you want to watch me desperately try to make bread in a can, this is the one to request :P


3) Slow-Cooker Bread

What's this?!

 I love bread. I love slow-cookers. This seems like a match made in heaven, and I want to try it some day. Also, it's bread. How could it not be good? Then again, I had literally never heard of this before I went looking for pictures of bread today, so I have no idea how good it is.


4) Sourdough

Possibly one of the best sandwich breads!

Sourdough and I have a long history of me eating sourdough bread and sourdough bread being consistently delicious. Unfortunately for me, sourdough is also one of the more difficult breads to make, requiring a sourdough starter. I don't currently have any starter, so I'll have to go looking for some (probably in one of the local shops, since I'd trust their starter more than something from a national chain that's been shipped across the continent several times before ending up in one of our Z-grade shops). That being said, I love me a good rustic sourdough, so any effort would be worth the final product.


5) White Bread

Simple, basic, tried & true...

Possibly the most popular bread in America, white bread is the most basic of breads. It's good with pretty much anything and for pretty much everything. It was, however the victim of my last attempt at breadmaking and came out like a set of bricks because I'm garbage at kneading! Maybe a second attempt (with a stand mixer and more supervision) could be what I need?


So those are the 5 breads I'm curious to try my hand at. If you have any suggestions, please make sure to leave them in the comments below - I get an e-mail notification every time you post, so I should be able to read them all!

But if I'm doing a bread overview, then what shall we do for a spice this week?

Molasses!

This bizarre goop is thick and bittersweet and completely ubiquitous in New England households. This byproduct of sugar production is often enjoyed by the older generations with some butter on warm bread. I've never been a huge fan of molasses on its own, since the flavor is pretty strong and polarizing. It's the licorice of the sugar-production world. To be honest, I just don't like it. When it's in bread, however, it give a deeper, richer flavor than more refined sugars, and it darkens the color of the bread to a significant degree. It's in both the anadama and brown bread recipes above, after all!

I would actually  recommend having some on-hand if you can find it, since it's got a some uses in cooking, but if you can't get a bottle of this stuff, don't fret overmuch. You'll probably be able to get it on Amazon, after all!



I think that'll do it for me today.

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC