My neighbor and fellow blogger, Joyce, in a recent post in Living in Potrerillos, decried the lack of decent bread here in Panama…http://joycepa.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-staff-of-life/. I couldn’t agree more. What I have tried was simply inedible. Even my four-legged garbage disposal, Charlotte, wouldn’t touch the stuff and I’m hoping the remains won’t damage the compost heap. The only thing I like about bread in Panama is the name of the largest bakery – BIMBO Bread. (A big conglomerate, I guess, because I’ve seen Bimbo bread in Spain and Mexico as well.)
One of the things I truly miss about France is the bread. If happiness is a warm puppy then a crispy, fresh from the oven French baguette is a mighty close second. It’s also a fact that no baguette ever makes it home from the boulangerie with the ends intact.
Recently I’ve made a couple of attempts at making bread myself. Previously I’ve only ventured into bread making a couple of times. One of my favorites, and enjoyed by everyone I know, has been cranberry bread. Actually this is more of a cake than a real bread and was something my mother made every Christmas time as I was growing up. The recipe is found on the back of every package of Ocean Spray whole cranberries. Around the holiday season bags are usually found in the produce section of the supermarket but the rest of the year you can often find them in the frozen food section. Cranberry bread is easy to make and absolutely delicious but you’d never use it to construct a tuna salad sandwich with the stuff.
This is not a photo of MY cranberry bread but shamelessly ripped off from:
http://christines-cuisine.blogspot.com/2009/12/cranberry-orange-nut-bread.html
If you want something yummy, here’s the recipe from Ocean Spray:
CLASSIC CRANBERRY NUT BREAD
INGREDIENTS:
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
2 tablespoons shortening
1 egg, well beaten
1 1/2 cups Ocean Spray® Fresh or Frozen Cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped nuts
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.
Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a medium mixing bowl. Stir in orange juice, orange peel, shortening and egg. Mix until well blended. Stir in cranberries and nuts. Spread evenly in loaf pan.
Bake for 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely. Wrap and store overnight. Makes 1 loaf (16 slices).
PER SERVING (1 slice): Cal. 211, Fat Cal. 54, Protein 3grams, Carb. 37grams, Fat 6grams, Chol. 18mg., Sodium 313mg.
Richard’s Rating: Ease of preparation A, Satisfaction A+
The only “real” kind of bread I ever made previously was a family recipe my maternal grandmother used to make for “Shredded Wheat” bread. A light, wonderfully nutty-tasting bread that doesn’t require kneading.
I’d love to make this again, but none of the four supermarkets in David stock shredded wheat cereal and I have no idea what could be used as a substitute.
Richard’s rating: Ease of preparation A, Satisfaction A+
The other day I decided I’d try my hand at producing some of the real stuff and went online and Googled “bread recipies.” The search engine came up with approximately 2,900,000 hits. Okay, narrow it down a bit and add the word “simple.” THAT came up with 3,250,000 hits! How is that possible?
Being basically a lazy, lay-about I next tried “no knead bread” and knocked it down to only 305,000 possibilities. Here’s a video I found:
Needless to say mine didn’t turn out like that in the video even though I followed the instructions to the letter. The New York Times recipe, (click to link to it) as well as others that are basically the same, all say “dough will be shaggy and sticky.” Mine was, for, oh, maybe three milliseconds and then it turned into something else. Not knowing what I could do to change the situation other than just starting all over again I decided to just let things develop and see what happened.
The next day this is what I got:
Looks pretty good, but it would have made a better discus than a loaf of bread. One problem, I think, was that the Dutch oven I used was probably too large so the dough spread out and gave me a loaf about 2-1/2″ high. On my next trip down the mountain to David I’ll buy one a little smaller. I need to build up my kitchen items over the next few months anyway for the time I’ll leave this house.
Richard’s rating: Ease of preparation B, Satisfaction D -.
Tuesday I had a go at what was supposed to be an easy recipe for generic white bread complete with kneading. I went through all the steps required and it turned out a lot better than my first attempt and I came up with this:
Again, it’s not something I’d use to make sandwiches with, but still warm with a little butter it was heads and shoulders above Bimbo bread but still lacked a little je ne sais quoi. It did make excellent toast the next morning.
Richard’s rating: Ease of preparation C+, Satisfaction C.
I’m not going to give up yet, though.
One More Good Adventure 