mulberryshoots

After lunch today, I mixed a batch of bread dough using Quaker Oats steel cut oatmeal. It’s a King Arthur “back of the bag” recipe and its ingredients are lukewarm whole milk, yeast, salt, melted butter, honey and flour in addition to the oatmeal. The shaggy dough felt really good as I kneaded it for about ten minutes. Then I turned on the oven light in our electric oven and set a greased bowl with the dough to rise for the early part of the afternoon.

After it rose the first time, I took the dough out, gently punched it down and kneaded a little more before shaping it into a loaf and letting it rise in a buttered bread pan until the top had risen almost two inches above the rim of the pan. Gingerly, I lifted it up and set it on the table while I preheated the oven to 350 degrees.

The fragrant aroma of baking bread is one of its great pleasures, the anticipation of peeking through the (closed) oven door and waiting long enough to cut a slice, buttering it with Kerrygold unsalted butter. I’ve packed a small container of the coleslaw and when the bread is cool enough to slice, I’ll slice a third of a loaf for G. to take across the street for his brother and 98-year old mother who have their supper around 5:30 in the afternoon.

Nothing better on a rain-day and cooking out of the pantry and fridge! While Mother Nature’s rainfall takes the winter’s edge off my car in the driveway.