Category: Vegetarian Dishes

Rustic Oatmeal Bread

I first made this bread while we were on vacation. I don’t remember where we were vacationing, though I am sure that it was at a resort where the fishing was good. As I review my many failings as a husband and father, I especially regret not taking our family on more vacations far away from places where the primary resource was water harboring trophy fish for fathers and plenty of ravenous panfish for mothers and children.

I lay the blame squarely at the feet of my parents, who both liked to fish. There are over one hundred named lakes within a thirty-mile circle of Hayward, Wisconsin, and we fished at least a quarter of them while I was growing up. We couldn’t afford vacations, but we could afford a day trip to a lake that Dad or Mom wanted to see and fish.

While Mom packed a picnic lunch, my sisters and I helped Dad dig angleworms and load the car with bait, rods, tackle boxes, paddles, swim suits, towels and 6-12 Mosquito Repellent plus a blanket or two to sit on. Finally, Dad lifted the canoe on top of the car and tied it down with our cane poles fastened beside the canoe. Soon we were off to a familiar lake or on our way to explore a new one.

Those were glorious adventures that I think help explain how we ended up at a primitive cabin that didn’t even have any bread pans on a cold rainy day when even I didn’t want to sit in a boat catching more walleyes. We already had some nice fillets in the refrigerator.

“Fresh bread,” I said, “would go good with the walleye.”

“And baking bread would help warm up the cabin,” observed my wife.

The kids applauded the idea of being able to take off their coats on what was supposed to be a summer vacation.

And so I baked some bread from memories of helping my mother. We had brought the ingredients with us, not because we planned on baking bread, but because we liked to cook good meals. Luckily I had tossed in a package of yeast with the idea of making some yeast-raised pancakes. Since we had no bread pans, I made free-form loaves. The egg wash gave them a nice finish.

This is a moist and hearty bread that keeps well.

INGREDIENTS

3 cups water, divided
2 teaspoons yeast
1 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
3 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup milk
About 7 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 egg

PROCEDURE

Stir a quarter teaspoon of sugar and two teaspoons of yeast into half cup of warm (105º) water and allow the yeast to proof. When bubbles begin to form on the surface of the water, you know that your yeast is alive and well. You have proofed or tested it.

Put two and a half cups of water into a saucepan, add a dash of salt and bring the water to a boil. Stir in the oatmeal and cook for five minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and empty the pan into a large mixing bowl. Add three teaspoons of salt, a quarter cup of sugar, four tablespoons of butter and a half cup of milk. Add three cups of flour, one at a time and stir them in well. Let this mixture cool until it feels warm but not hot. Stir in the yeast and allow this thin sponge to sit until you see bubbles rising to the surface.

Add about three cups of flour one cup at a time, mixing well after each addition until you have a moist but thick dough. Flour a breadboard or countertop with a half cup of flour and scrape the dough out of the bowl. The dough will be sticky to work with, so use a baker’s scraper or spatula to turn the dough and begin working flour into it. Knead the dough until it is elastic and no longer sticky, adding flour as necessary.

Grease the bread bowl and turn the dough to cover the surface when you put it into the bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let it rise until doubled in bulk. Grease a large baking sheet.

Remove the dough from the bowl, knead it for thirty seconds or so and divide it into three parts. Make three balls and place them on the baking sheet. Cover them with the damp cloth and allow them to rise until the dough is again doubled in bulk.

Preheat the oven to 350º while the loaves are rising.

Separate the egg and beat the white with a teaspoon of cold water. Brush the tops of the loaves and sprinkle some oatmeal on top.

Bake about forty minutes in a 350º oven. The bread is done when an instant read thermometer inserted near the center of a loaf reads 190º. Or do what my mother always did: Tap on the bottom of a loaf. If it sounds hollow, the bread is done.

NOTES: You can use butter, lard or shortening to grease the bowl and baking sheet. You can also bake the balls in greased pie plates.

Strawberry Cream Puffs

Every cook should have a disaster once in a while, if only as a reminder that no one is perfect. At least that’s what I tell myself when something goes wrong with a dish. A corollary might be that every cook needs someone to explain what caused the disaster. That pretty much sums up my situation as I write this explanation as to why my cream puffs failed to puff.

Cream puffs are made by following one of those magical recipes that transform ordinary ingredients into something wonderful. In this case, mix butter, water and flour together with a little salt and sugar, beat in some eggs and put globs of the stuff on a pan and bake in the oven. Pouff! The globs blow up into lovely cases that you can fill with whipped cream or puddings to create delicious desserts.

My mother made cream puffs at least once a month when I was a kid, and I think that I helped make my first batch of those lovely pastries when I was seven or eight years old. Since then I have baked cream puffs forty or fifty times, but I haven’t made any in the last few years. That interval, combined with my advancing age, most likely explains why my cream puffs did not puff.

As I gnashed my teeth and lamented the fact that our son, daughter-in-law and grandson would not be enjoying the promised strawberry cream puffs, Jerri opened The Joy of Cooking and soon found the explanation for my failure. I had merely stirred and cooked the choux paste too long. Since our offspring were expecting dessert, we decided to cut open one of the nasty little blobs to see what might be done.

“Sort of like tough scones,” observed Jerri. “If we put extra strawberry juice and lots of whipped cream on them, they’ll be fine.”

That’s what we did, and our son and daughter-in-law politely ate their cream puffs and thanked me. Our twenty-three-month-old grandson has not yet learned the rules of social politeness, however. Like our Momma Cat from years ago eating all the food around the pill we had hidden in her dish, the kid scarfed down the strawberries and scraped most of the whipped cream into his little mouth but left the chunks of cream puff. Thinking that he had simply not realized that the pieces of stuff that looked like cardboard were edible, I offered him a piece on his spoon.

He scowled and shook his head and kept his mouth clamped shut. However, when I put a couple more slices of strawberry topped with whipped cream into his bowl, he shoveled them in and grinned at me. Now I am more determined than ever that he will learn to like my cream puffs.

UPDATE 6/21/17: It turns out that we have a new gourmet in the family. The little grandson ate two cream puffs yesterday and begged for more!

Here is how to make them the right way.

INGREDIENTS:

For the cream puff shells:
1/3 cup butter
1 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1 T sugar
5 large eggs

For the filling:
Fresh strawberries
Heavy whipping cream
1 – 2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

PROCEDURE:

Set the eggs out ahead of time to come to a warm room temperature or put them into a bowl of warm water until they no longer feel cold.

Preheat the oven to 400º and lightly grease two large baking sheets.

Sift the flour into a measuring cup and use a knife to level off the cup. Return the extra flour to the flour canister and put the measured cup of flour into the sifter over a bowl. Add the salt and sugar and sift the mixture into the bowl.

Put the butter and milk into a heavy-bottomed two-quart pan over low to moderate heat. When the butter has melted, increase the heat until the liquid comes to a boil, then add the flour mixture all at once and stir vigorously. The flour will look funny to start with but will become smooth. Keep stirring fast until the dough stops clinging to the sides of the pan and leaves a smooth dent when pressed with the back of the spoon. Do not overcook the dough OR IT WILL NOT PUFF.

Take the pan off the heat and let it sit for two minutes, then stir in the eggs with the wooden spoon, one at a time. Beat after you add each egg until the dough no longer looks slippery.

When the last egg has been beaten into the dough, you are ready to make the cream puff shells. If you have a pastry bag, you can make very professional-looking cream puffs or eclairs. I use two spoons to make mounds with two or three tablespoons of dough for each cream puff. Mounds of dough should be separated by about three inches on the pans. You will be making one and one-half to two dozen cream puffs, depending on the size.

Sprinkle the dough with a few drops of water and put the pans into the hot oven. Bake for ten minutes, then reduce the heat to 350º and continue baking for twenty-two to twenty-six minutes longer. Test for doneness by tapping one of the shells. It should feel hard when you tap it.

Remove the pans from the oven and let the shells cool completely.

Whip the cream and prepare the strawberries just before you want to assemble the cream puffs. The amounts of cream and strawberries depends on how many cream puffs you need. Here are guidelines for enough to fill six cream puffs.

Wash and slice about a pint of fresh strawberries into a small bowl, sprinkle with a teaspoon or two of sugar and put the covered bowl in the refrigerator. Put a cup of heavy cream into a beater bowl and put it into the freezer about fifteen minutes before whipping the cream. Put the beaters into the freezer at the same time.

Start whipping on low speed for a few seconds until there are bubbles on top of the cream, then increase the speed gradually to high. Beat until the cream starts to thicken. Reduce the speed while you sprinkle in the sugar, then raise the speed and beat until the cream is nearly as thick as you want it. Add the vanilla and beat a few seconds to mix it in.

To make the cream puffs, used a serrated knife to slice the shells horizontally. Moist filaments inside can be removed and eaten as the cook’s reward for a job well done.
Put two or three tablespoons of sliced strawberries into the bottom half of the shell and top them with whipped cream. Replace the top half of the shell, cover with a spoon of strawberries and some more whipped cream.

NOTES: Use a quarter teaspoon of salt for the cream puff shell dough if you are using unsalted butter.

Extra shells don’t keep very well, so you have to use them in a day or two. My mother often made vanilla pudding and dribbled chocolate sauce over the tops of the cream puffs as if they were eclairs. Classic cream puffs simply have lots of whipped cream in them and are often garnished with a little powdered sugar.