Bread Adventures (Batch 10) Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

         I am getting a little tired of all the time I am spending in the kitchen!  Not because of the bread baking... but all the other summer chores!  And I shouldn't even whine.... I am not home that much.  But the tomatoes are ripening daily... and the peppers are exploding!  My freezer is filling up!   I am almost glad that one of my squash plants died and I forgot the beans.  The cucumbers and watermelon went in late.. but they are experiments anyway so we'll see what comes of them :-)

       I had to skip past the recipes for both the English Granary Bread and Oatmeal bread -  don't have oat bran, malted flour or malt flakes... honestly - locating some of the ingredients has been challenging.  The bran may be available, I have one more store to check... the malt I will have to order on line.  I want to verify about the oat bran though before I actually place the order.   I think it would not be so difficult in a more urban setting - I guess that is the price I pay for living in the country and getting to look at a river from my front porch.  The nearest stores are 30 miles away... I can get most of the ingredients.  The others I would probably be able to find within an hour and a half travel time, but I am not inclined to spend either the gas or the time when they are available here with a quick click!

First - the Oatmeal Pumpkin Bread - good but a little boring from my perspective.  Definitely not a dessert bread - I think I like pumpkin better for dessert.  The pumpkin flavor was not very noticeable.  perhaps that was because I used canned pumpkin instead of roasting my own pie pumpkins..... but tell me... even if you were so inclined to do it.... where would I get a pie pumpkin at this time of year?

Using the same dough, I made Oatmeal Pumpkin Seed Bread. Oops, I forgot the egg wash on the crust... my bad.... I am not sure what that means - but the taste of this bread is super!  I think this might be another addition to Thanksgiving.  One of the things I am enjoying the MOST is that even a kitchen dummy can bake fantastic bread :-)

la

The next bread - which my family has been eagerly awaiting - is Vermont Cheddar Bread. I didn't have plain cheddar to shred, so I used had large bag of shredded Monterey Jack & Cheddar instead. It worked fine though the flavor was not as cheesy as I would have liked :-)

We had a bit of a crisis with this bread.... I baked 2 loaves.. one for a potluck and one for us.  But WHILE they were cooling....... one of the loaves disappeared...  So... AFTER I talked to each of my men..... we settled on the dog as our culprit.  He HAS stolen from the counter before and is quite talented at leaving NO CRUMBS.... oh my... a very bad but HAPPY dog...

Lucky is the big dog in the back..... I wonder if he shared... or got the whole loaf in a big gulp!  I gues more of my family was waiting for the cheese bread than I thought!

My gang scarfed the other loaf... so this is another time when I had to repeat the dough to get a photo!  This time, I put the loaf into the microwave to cool!  Also I made this one with shredded cheddar as specified!

 That melt-y cheese is just oozing - oh my, is it good!  There is 4 loaves worth of dough and I am going to make rolls with some of it!


Remember to check this book out at the library..... or buy it at Amazon by clicking the link below :-)