Panis Cum Laude

Ever heard of the Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital soup, Gentle Reader? What about the Sacred Heart Hospital diet? Or any other allegedly hospital-associated diet or diet food?

Whether you have or you haven't, most likely your level of skepticism has hitched up a few notches just reading that paragraph, and for good reason: Most of these diets or super-duper weight loss food items that float around are total bubkes.

Knowing what a cynical SOB I am, you can surely understand then, Gentle Reader, that I was scoffing quite heartily when I came across a recipe in Donna Rathmell German's The Bread Machine Cookbook for high-protein diet, aka Cornell, bread. Sounds like some kind of Atkins craze cash-in, non?

Here's what Rathmell German has to say about the bread:

Much better than the commercial diet breads which [sic] use 'sawdust fiber' as filler. This is a tasty, dense loaf. The recipe is based on a formula devised for superior nutrition in bread by Cornell University.

Believe it or not, Gentle Reader, she's right. And it has nothing to do with Atkins. The bread dates back to the '40s and was devised to help provide good nutrition in spite of wartime rationing. So to fully disprove my deeply rooted cynicism, I had to make this loaf for myself.

High Protein Diet (Cornell) Bread1 C water
1 T vegetable oil
1 T honey
3/4 t salt
2 T wheat germ
1/4 C soy flour
1 C whole wheat flour
1 1/2 C bread flour
1/4 C nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 t vital gluten, optional
1 1/2 t yeast

1. Add ingredients into bread bucket according to the order recommended by the bread machine's manufacturer.
   
2. Select the Whole wheat or Basic cycle option.
   
3. Start the cycle.

Yield: One small (1-pound) loaf

Nutritional Info
Rathmell German does not provide nutritional info for her recipes, and I couldn't readily (i.e., within a few clicks) find the nutritional info for the original Cornell bread recipe. Sorry.

The Faudie's Futzings
I was surprised by the small amount of vital gluten called for as an option since all my research has the recommended vital gluten-to-whole wheat flour ratio at one tablespoon for every cup of flour. Based on previous success with that ratio and suspecting that all those flours and the wheat germ would make for some dense dough that might have a helluva time rising, I added a full tablespoon of vital gluten to my bread.

Did I end up with a taller loaf?

Hell no.

As you can see, Rathmell German was very right when she wrote that this is a dense loaf. It's a squat, dense loaf. It's not an especially pretty loaf, but I'm not of the school that every loaf of bread ought to be a visual work of art.

I can't imagine how the loaf might have turned out if I hadn't added the gluten. I'll also say, Gentle Reader, that I doubted the 1.5 teaspoons of yeast was enough, but I followed that direction. Next time, perhaps I'll use the more common 2.25 teaspoons. Then again, perhaps the moist air we've been enjoying lately interfered with the bread's rising. In fact, just today I baked yet another loaf of honey whole wheat bread for the boy, and for the first time ever, the sucker sank as the bread machine kicked over to the baking cycle.

As for Rathmell German's claim that this is a tasty loaf, I'll only partially agree. To my taste buds, it didn't taste too terribly different from some other loaves the husband and I have made that have combined whole wheat and bread flours. In fact, I was a little let down by the taste.

Did that stop me from by and large devouring the entire loaf within a few hours of its emergence from the loaf bucket?

Hell no.