A Christmas Breadmaking Miracle

The husband's inability to follow simple instructions continues to astound me.

--The Faudie
Inspired by The Faudie's recent success baking cinnamon bread without the assistance of a machine, I thought I'd attempt to make my own handmade bread. King Arthur's savory Christmas cheese bread* seemed to be a good recipe for a beginner such as myself--a pure quick bread requiring no yeast should be simple to prepare, shouldn't it?

Yeah, right.

Here's the recipe, copied-and-pasted directly from King Arthur's website, not hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper as I did on Christmas morning (an important plot point we'll return to later):

Savory Christmas Cheese Bread

3 C unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1 1/4 t salt
1 C fresh-grated Parmesan cheese
1 C shredded sharp cheddar, mozzarella or the cheese of your choice
4 T softened butter
4 large eggs
1/2 C whole milk or half-and-half
3 large garlic cloves, crushed (optional)
1/2 C finely chopped scallion tops or chives, lightly packed; or green bell peppers
1/2 C finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, lightly packed; or diced red bell peppers, or diced pimientos
1 teaspoon pizza seasoning (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9" round cake pan or 9" round casserole.
2. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, cheeses and softened butter until well combined and crumbly.
3. Mix in the garlic, scallion tops and sun-dried tomatoes.
4. Whisk together the eggs and milk (or half-and-half). Set aside 1 tablespoon of the mixture to brush on the top of the loaf.
5. Add the remaining egg mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring just until everything is thoroughly moistened.
6. Turn the stiff batter into the prepared pan. Using your wet fingers, smooth it to the edges of the pan. Make it slightly concave, so the edges are slightly higher than the center.
7. Brush the top of the loaf with the reserved egg mixture. Sprinkle with pizza seasoning, if desired.
8. Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes, until it's a light golden brown on top and a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
9. Remove the loaf from the oven and run a heatproof spatula or table knife around the edge of the pan, to loosen the sides. Turn it out of the pan onto a rack to cool.

Yield: 1 9" round loaf

Nutritional Info
Not provided.

The Husband's Futzings
The recipe offers some flexibility with the ingredients, so I used a hot pepper jack cheese in place of the cheddar or mozzarella, and I used red bell peppers and green onions as the red and green ingredients.

The recipe does not, however, suggest using anything but half of a cup of milk or (in this case) half-and-half. Somehow, though, in my aforementioned handwritten copy of the recipe, I wrote down that I needed one-and-a-half cups of half-and-half, not half a cup. I've never been great at math, but even I know that's three times more half-and-half than I needed. The result, I discovered, was a very wet mixture that was clearly not going to bake properly. (For one thing, it wasn't even going to fit in that single 9" round cake pan.)

It's moments like that when I'm really, really grateful for my significant other. I'm not always the best at swallowing my pride and asking for help when I need it, but in this instance, I sooooooooooooooo needed The Faudie to come to my rescue.

With her guidance, I added three-quarters of a cup of white whole wheat flour and a full cup of additional pepper jack to help thicken the gooey mess I'd made. Crossing my fingers (figuratively, of course, as it's hard to cook with your fingers actually crossed), I poured the mixture into two 9" cake pans, put 'em into the oven and waited to see what would happen next.

Okay, okay, maybe calling the result a Christmas miracle is a bit of hyperbole. But still. Against all my expectations, the two loaves came out looking perfect. I even have the photo to prove it:

Merry Christmas to me!

The bread tastes good too, though not exactly the way I'd expected. I think the flavor of the cheese and the bell peppers and the green onions gets overpowered by the taste of the eggs. I can't complain, though--I'll happily take a fine egg bread over the disaster I thought I had on my hands. And it was a perfect accompaniment to our holiday lunch of jambalaya and the 598th showing of A Christmas Story on TBS.

*Honestly, I'm not sure exactly what this bread has to do with Christmas other than the fact that it's red, yellow and green. Don't worry, though--if you want to make it on some day other than December 25th, you could always call it "savory traffic light cheese bread." Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

Evidence That Something's Wrong With the Midwest

I present to you, Gentle Reader, the True Wisconsin Bloody Mary.

I've heard of Bloody Mary drinks. I've heard of shrimp cocktail appetizers. This monstrosity is...an hors d'oeuvre you drink? An apertif that doubles as finger food? What the hell is this abomination, and what is going on in Wisconsin that led to its creation?

Remind me never to visit Wisconsin.

I Make Bread From Scratch Without a Machine!

The King Arthur Baker's Catalog is really good at making a person think she can work wonders in the kitchen with baked goods. And why not? At your fingertips are most of the tools and ingredients you need, not to mention a few recipes to get your juices flowing.

Of course, what King Arthur doesn't sell in its Baker's Catalog is competence. Competence doesn't come cheap either, especially if you're working your way toward competency with King Arthur's tools and ingredients. But to tell you the truth, Gentle Reader, sometimes the expense is worth it because using quality ingredients improves your chances of success and thus improves your likelihood of achieving competence. You can also trust the recipes from King Arthur because the company has its own test kitchen with bakers and cooks who are committed to keeping King Arthur's good name intact.

So despite my sad history of massive failures when it comes to working with yeasty baked goods without the assistance of a bread machine, I endeavored to make the Easy Cinnamon Bread featured in the Winter 2010 Baker's Catalog because the husband seemed so excited by it. Yeah, I know, Gentle Reader, every now and then I can be kind.

Easy Cinnamon Bread3 C (12.75 oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 C (3.5 oz.) sugar
2 t instant yeast
1 t cinnamon
1 t NaCl
1 t baking powder
1 C (8 oz.) warm milk
1/4 C (1/2 stick, 4 oz.) butter, melted
1 large egg
1 C (6 oz.) cinnamon chips
Cinnamon-sugar blend (optional)

1. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, cinnamon, NaCl and baking powder.
   
2. In a second bowl, whisk together the milk, butter and egg.
   
3. Combine the liquid and dry ingredients, beating until smooth.
   
4. Stir in cinnamon chips.
   
5. Cover and let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hr.
   
6. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
   
7. Prep an 8.5" x 4.5" loaf pan.
   
8. Stir the batter down, and then spoon it into the loaf pan.
   
9. Optionally, sprinkle the top of the loaf with the cinnamon-sugar blend.
   
10. Bake the bread for 35-40 min. or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
    
11. Remove the bread from the oven and let it rest in the pan for 5 min.
    
12. Transfer the bread from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Do not attempt to slice the bread while it's hot.

Yield: 1 loaf with an unknown number of servings.

Nutritional Info
While King Arthur does provide nutritional info for the recipes it publishes in The Baking Sheet, it doesn't do the same for recipes in its catalog.

The Faudie's Futzings
Never try to prepare a "quickbread" recipe while also making risotto and sauting chicken, especially when you decide to take on the brand-new bread recipe at the last minute. Rapidly bringing to room temperature flour, an egg, yeast and cinnamon chips isn't fun. It's also a tricky thing to warm milk in the microwave without accidentally scorching it while also trying to keep risotto cooking with a combo of milk and water from scorching on the stove. Multitasking has its limits, Gentle Reader!

Despite my lack of more active preparation, I muddled through somehow:

• I did my best to measure the dry ingredients by weight rather than volume. I've got a kitchen scale, so I might as well use the damn thing.
  
• I ran out of unbleached white flour, so I had to add about half an ounce of white whole wheat flour, which I didn't bother bringing to room temperature. Always make sure you really have enough of the ingredients before you start the recipe, Gentle Reader.
  
• The recipe doesn't specify what type of milk to use, but I only have skim (aka, fat-free) milk in my home--and only for special purposes such as this one. I don't know if the lack of fat affected the finished product the way liquid egg whites can make runny messes of cookies that need full eggs to hold them together. These are mysteries I'll leave to other people to explore.
  
• The bread needed 50 minutes to get to the point of yielding a clean toothpick poked in the center. After a first check at 35 minutes, the center was still gooey. At 40 minutes, the center was still gooey. Throwing caution to the wind and risking a burned mess (burnt cinnamon smells terrible and is totally inedible, in my highly esteemed opinion), I let the loaf bake 10 more minutes...and got a baked-through center.

I'm not sure if the longer baking time was necessary because of the cool, dry weather, because the ingredients weren't all at room temperature before I started the recipe or because I screwed up somewhere so that the dough didn't rise at all during its resting hour. Yeah, that's right--the dough didn't do squat. Obviously it's supposed to since step 8 instructs you to stir the batter down, implying that the dough should have risen some because of the yeast. That didn't happen for me, but I didn't get my faudie panties in a bunch. I just...well, chalked it up to my string of failures with yeast breads not made with a bread machine. I must not have fed the yeast the right kind of food or not mixed the yeast and the food in the right way for the feasting and growth and rising to take place. I gradually added the dry ingredients to the liquid ones, believing that's the way Christopher Kimball says is the way to do it to yield fluffier cookies and breads. My memory could be faulty on that point, but I also reasoned that when I put ingredients in the bread machine pan, I put the liquid in first and then add the flour, the salt in one corner, the sugar in another and then the yeast on top, thus adding the dry to the liquid would sort of follow that scheme. Eh, maybe I was wrong.

I followed the cooling instructions as best I could, but I have to confess, Gentle Reader, that I'm a sucker for warm carbs. The loaf could be a total disaster, but if it's warm I have an incredibly difficult time keeping myself from devouring the whole damn loaf. And that's what happened last night: I pretty much devoured half the loaf. The husband had three-fourths of the half I didn't eat, which meant he got to enjoy a smidge of it this morning for breakfast...

...and reported the bread was much better warm. That's not to say the taste was off, but the experience of eating the bread--the emotional fulfillment and culinary satisfaction of eating the loaf was diminished by its lack of warmth. So if you plan to make this one, Gentle Reader, take that whole "Don't slice the bread until it's completely cool!" advice with a large grain of salt.