Tag: vegetarian

Yogurt Bread

“I don’t feel so bad throwing something away after it has spoiled,” explained Grandma Krehbiel as she was putting small amounts of leftovers into the refrigerator. Not enough for even one child’s serving, perhaps a single tablespoon of gravy or three or four green beans, but she didn’t like wasting things.

After a day or two those little leftovers got pushed to the back of the shelves, only to be discovered when Grandma was tracking down a suspicious odor. Then, with a clear conscience, she consigned them to the garbage pile behind the henhouse.

Refrigerators sometimes seem like black holes which pull leftovers into oblivion, only to spew them forth weeks or even months later. One of Jerri’s fellow piano teachers shared the quick-witted reply she made to her husband who was snooping in the fridge and sniffing a plastic container.

“What’s this?”he growled, thinking that he had caught his wife red-handed with a spoiled leftover.

“Don’t touch that! It’s one of the kid’s science experiments,” she said confidently.

Rather than admit that he was not sure what science experiments they were involved in, he retreated to the family room. When he was safely in front of the TV, she bagged the container and took it directly to the trash bin outside. A potential domestic crisis was thus smoothly averted by a brilliant woman.

Several weeks, or possibly months, ago I bought a container of plain unflavored yogurt. I used some for making dowjic and put the container in plain sight on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator so I wouldn’t forget about it. Somehow it ended up at the back of the shelf behind some pickles and relish where I found it recently. Jerri was out running errands, so I was careful but not really nervous about opening the container.

Much to my delight, the yogurt was still perfectly good. We needed bread, so I dragged out my recipe for yogurt bread. It is an interesting white bread with a lovely smooth texture and a taste of yogurt that reminds me of sourdough bread. Even if you don’t like yogurt, this is a recipe worth trying. It’s wonderful warm out of the oven and makes excellent toast.

INGREDIENTS:

5 tsp. or 2 packages of dry yeast
1 T granulated sugar
1/2 cup warm water (100 to 110 degrees)
5 cups unbleached white bread flour plus more for kneading
1 T salt
3 T melted butter
1 cup warm milk
1 1/2 cups unflavored yogurt

PROCEDURE:

As usual when making bread, start by scrubbing your hands thoroughly. Dissolve the sugar in the water, stir in the yeast and allow it to proof.

Warm the milk and yogurt, add the butter and salt and stir everything together in a large bowl. Stir in about two cups of flour until you have a smooth batter. Then add the yeast mixture and stir vigorously to bring back the smooth batter.

Next, add the remaining flour one cup at a time and mix it in completely before adding the next cup. You may find that the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl before all the flour is added; if so, use the remainder to flour your work surface and scrape the dough onto it. On the other hand, if the dough seems a little too soft with only five cups, you may add a little extra flour or simply work the flour in as you knead the dough.

It is a sticky dough, so use a spatula to turn the dough on a well-floured surface until you can press it down without its sticking to your hands too much. Knead the dough until it has a soft satiny feel. This will take eight to ten minutes.

Grease the bowl with shortening. Form the dough into a ball and turn it in the bowl to cover the surface with shortening. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and set it in a warm place to rise until the dough has doubled in bulk.

Grease two five by nine inch loaf pans.

When the dough has risen, punch it down and divide it in half, knead each half briefly and form it into a loaf. Place the loaves into the pans. Cover the pans with the damp cloth and let the loaves rise until they are near the top edges of the pans.

Preheat the oven to 375º.

Put the pans on the center shelf in the oven and bake for thirty-five to forty minutes until the top of the bread is golden brown. Test for doneness by tapping the top of each loaf. The loaves should sound hollow. Remove the loaves from the pans and cool them on a rack.

NOTES: If you want a shiny crust, brush the tops of the loaves with an egg wash made by beating a teaspoon of water with the white of an egg before you put them in the oven. If you want a harder crust, return the loaves to the oven for four or five minutes after removing them from the pans.

Mennonite Waffles

Making waffles is a pretty straightforward business, assuming that you have a waffle iron and follow the recipe below. However, you should observe two common-sense rules when you make them.

RULE #1: Don’t put your hand into a hot waffle iron. Pam, my youngest sister, learned this the hard way when she was a little girl. “I also remember getting a bad burn when the top closed on my hand. Little fingers in the wrong spot. Mom told me it was hot but did I listen? NO.”

RULE #2: When beating the egg whites with an electric mixer, make sure that it is turned off before lifting the beater out of the bowl. The splotches on the pages of waffle recipes in our copy of the Mennonite Community Cookbook are mute but eloquent testimony to my once ignoring this rule.

A couple of years after we moved out to the country, we got a waffle iron. It was a round chrome machine with a thick cord and I think there was a thermometer in the middle of the lid that told you when it was hot enough to make waffles. Mom was probably the person who bought it, as she loved kitchen equipment from apple corers to lemon zesters. Dad was happy with Mom’s pancakes.

My sisters Barb and Patsy agree that we didn’t have waffles very often, but I think that my enjoyment of waffles and sausage for Sunday supper may stem from good memories of waffle suppers when I was a kid. I do remember that the waffles sometime stuck if you didn’t grease the iron properly and especially if you tried to take them out before they were done.

Today, of course, most waffle irons have non-stick coatings which virtually eliminate the sticking problem, and improvements in waffle iron design by 1969 when Jerri’s mother bought us our waffle iron made even the the metal grid machines like ours pretty trouble free. I miss the thermometer, but the “idiot light” that goes out when the waffle is done does mean fewer overcooked waffles.

Here is the recipe we use for waffles.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
2 T sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
6 T butter
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups milk

PROCEDURE:

The eggs and milk should be at room temperature. You can warm the eggs in a small bowl of warm water for a few minutes and heat the milk for a few seconds in a microwave. Melt the butter.

Turn on your waffle iron and follow any instructions for use that came with it. Start warming the maple syrup.

Sift the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Separate the eggs into two bowls. Beat the yolks until lemon colored and then beat them into the milk. Stir the milk and egg mixture into the flour until you have a smooth batter. Stir the butter into the batter.

Beat the egg whites until they are stiff but not dry. When you turn off the mixer and lift the beaters from the egg whites, you should see peaks with just a tiny curl on the top. Fold the egg whites into the batter with a spatula. Use the spatula to lift the batter over the egg whites, using a figure-eight motion until you have a light fluffy batter.

Bake the waffles and serve each one as it comes off the iron with butter, warm maple syrup. Bacon and breakfast sausage are delicious with waffles.

NOTES: You need butter to make waffles that taste like real waffles. If you merely want waffles that look like the real thing, you can buy them in the freezer section of your neighborhood market.