• braided bread

    It’s been a bugger of a week in the kitchen.

    Several days ago I sent out (what I thought was) an innocuous-enough tweet/facebook message that read, “What should be my next cooking project? I want something new and exciting and delicious. Suggestions, please.”

    My sweet cousin tweeted back, “How about you perfect the art of the English muffin (preferably with some whole grains). Or have you tried that already?”

    As of today, I have five failed English muffin recipes under my belt. Also, I no longer think my cousin is very sweet. In fact, I think she might be a little bit evil. She probably thought to herself, “She wants a project? Ha! I’ll give her THE MOTHER OF ALL PROJECTS! Let’s see how she handles this one!” and—ka-BAM!—she tossed me an idea and then sat back to watch the flour fly.

    Or maybe that’s just my tired, English muffin-overloaded brain running a-muck. At this point, I really have no idea.

    I have one more variation to try later on today and then I’m clean out of ideas. Which slays me. I’ve figured out how to duplicate a number of (what I thought were) unduplicable foods—bagels! baguettes! flour tortillas!—and so I was quite hopeful that I could conquer the English muffin.

    Maybe I was too hopeful. (In any case, if you have any English muffin-making advice to bestow upon my drooping head, then please do so, okay?  And yes, I’m begging. Desperate times and all…)

    Because all my hard work was getting me nowhere, on Friday I decided to pour my energies into something more straightforward: braided bread. This egg bread is a piece of cake to make, looks fancy, and tastes delicious. Also, it has Easter written all over it.

    The recipe first entered our family about 25 years ago. My family had moved to Leadmine, West Virginia when I was ten, and while the culture was shockingly different from our previous life in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (no Mennonites in sight, no running water at the church, bears in the woods, etc), there was one family in particular that went out of their way to make us feel at home. Judy was one of the daughters, grown and with children of her own, and, if I’m remembering correctly, she had us over for dinner one Sunday afternoon and served us this bread.

    Judy’s family lived in an underground house. The front part stuck out from the side of the hill, but the back rooms were completely underground—it was strange and fabulous. Every time I went to their house I was reminded of the cow that stuck its foot through the roof of Laura Ingalls’ sod house. I kind of hoped that something similarly exotic would happen at Judy’s house, but it never did.

    Unless you count the braided bread. That was exotic and delicious. I thought it the most amazing bread ever and my mother must have, too, because she got the recipe and went on to serve it at a great number of our own company meals.

    I didn’t make this bread yesterday with the intention of serving it to company, but then my parents showed up so it was kind of a company meal after all. Except not really, because my parents aren’t real company—you know, the kind that makes you spin into a tizz—and besides, all I served them was a big bowl of salad (store-bought greens with bacon and boiled eggs) and the fresh braided bread and jam. (And the not-good-enough English muffins. But we’re not talking about them any more, now, are we.)

    Braided Bread

    Because of its fairly high sugar content, this bread gets dark quite quickly. Bake it on your best burn-proof baking sheet and cover it with foil if it gets too dark.

    2 tablespoons yeast
    ½ cup warm water
    ½ cup sugar
    ½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted
    1 tablespoon salt
    1 ½ cups warm milk
    3 eggs, beaten
    7 cups flour, approximately
    1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for the glaze

    Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and set aside.

    In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, butter, salt, warm milk, and several cups of the flour. Stir in the dissolved yeast and the eggs. Add the remaining flour, a bit at a time, taking care not to add too much, until the dough is stiff enough to knead but still slightly sticky. Knead for five minutes until smooth. Set the dough in the floured bowl, cover, and let to rise until doubled.

    Divide the dough in half and cut each half into three equal parts. Shape each part into a long rope, about 15 inches long, or several inches longer than the baking pan. Lay three ropes side by side and braid them together, pinching the ends together and tucking them under the loaf. Repeat with the other three ropes.

    Lay the braids on greased baking sheets (I used two separate sheets but you may be able to fit them on one large one) that have been sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover and let rise for 30-60 minutes until puffy but not quite doubled.

    Immediately before baking, brush them with the egg wash (I use a paper napkin to dab on the glaze). Bake at 350 degrees for 25-35 minutes.

    This bread is best served warm. Tear off great hunks and slather with butter and jam. Leftovers make good French toast.

    This same time, years previous: baby love, grape kuchen, coconut brownies

  • the boy and the dishes

    It was after lunch and I was hustling around cleaning up the various kitchen hot spots—stove, table, counter—while.my son did the dishes. Because my son washes dishes as though he has a hundred hours in each day and not a care in the world (read, slooooowly), I had set the timer for him.

    “Get this many dishes done in ten minutes or else you have a window to wash, too,” I threatened.

    So he was washing at a steady pace—not super-fast, but not slooooowly either.

    However, the other thing he does when he washes dishes is he talks.

    Or whistles.

    Or sings.

    Or makes weird noises.

    Or asks questions.

    It’s more of an undercurrent of sound, not loud and abrasive, so I wasn’t paying him any mind this afternoon until he said, “Mom?”

    “Um, yeah, um…” I said, focused on straightening out the throw rug. And then, suddenly aware of the question dangling in the air, “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t listening. Try again.”

    “Nah,” he said cheerfully.

    I paused my clean-up to observe him washing. I do this occasionally—turn myself into a hawk, head jutting forward, eyes popping and piercing—because we have trouble with the dishes getting all the way clean. Every business needs quality control management and the home kitchen is no different. There’s no point in washing the dishes if they aren’t going to get clean, I’m forever saying.

    “Boy,” I harped, “you didn’t even wash the mouth of that glass! And all I used it for was cutting out the muffins. It’s filthy! Look at what you’re doing!”

    Unfazed, my son swiped the rag over the glass’s rim. “I’ve washed more dishes in my life than you have in yours,” he stated calmly.

    “Yeah, whatever.”

    “As soon as I was born,” he continued, “my mama looked me in the eye and said, GO WASH THE DISHES.”

    Which is probably what it feels like. I’ll give him that much.

    ***

    In other news, another Kitchen Chronicles is out this week. It’s all about eggs.

    And Dutch Puff.

    This puff gets divided four ways and disappears lickety-split. Soon I’ll have to make two each time. (Actually, my daughter is the Dutch puff maker. All I do is bake it.)

    This same time, years previous: cream puffs (another thing to make if you’re swimming in eggs), oatmeal crackers

  • warts and all

    I think my thumb might fall off any day now. It’s the one on my right hand, and it has a lot of ailments—namely, a slew of warts and a way-down-deep splinter.

    Yes, “warts” is a dirty word and I’m sorry to use it here, but I feel compelled to tell the truth. (Mainly because if I suddenly stop writing, you’ll know it’s because my thumb fell off and I can’t type anymore. You need to know these things.)

    The warts have been there for eons (they’re all over my hand, and only my right one is stricken—perhaps I committed a grievous sin with it and am now reaping the dire consequences?), and we’ve become rather fond of each other, the warts and I, but then I got a little cut (I was grating cheese and decided it’d be a jolly hoot to grate my knuckle, too) and had to bandage up my thumb for a couple days which resulted in my wart, thanks to all the moisture trapped in by the bandage, puffing up to gross proportions and looking very much like a baby cauliflower that was sprouting from my thumb.

    About that time, I discovered a baby wart a little higher up on my thumb. And then I poked my thumb on a jagged wooden doorframe, so on went another band-aid. A day later my thumb was hurting kind of bad, so off goes the bandage and that’s when I realized that part of the wooden doorframe was still in my thumb, a quarter-inch down in and with no easily graspable part of it sticking back out. And, two more baby warts were starting, yay and yay.

    So I applied some wart-eating acid pads, put on two band-aids, and went to bed. The next time I take off the band-aids, there will probably be a whole colony of warts under there, whooping it up real good. I’m scared.

    And as for the splinter, I had a thought. Once I put a too-big piece of wart-eating acid pad on my daughter’s finger and it ate off part of her finger along with the wart. So if the splinter doesn’t come off on its own, I’ll just stick a quarter-inch strip of acid pad over the splinter. That ought to do the trick, don’t you think?

    (Notice there are no pictures. You’re welcome.)

    ***

    Nothing makes a house feel dirtier than swarms of flies. They congregate around certain areas on the floor/counters/stove/table/computer, and even though those areas may look clean, the cloud of flies is a dead giveaway that they’re not. It’s like the flies are infrared detectors, but instead of heat, they’re detecting food smears. It’s quite gross.

    (Again, notice there are no pictures. You’re welcome.)

    ***

    In the car ride on the way to the theater (where we ushered for Richard III and my daughter was so freaked by all the killing that she alternated between fleeing the theater, burrowing her head into the doorjamb, and curling up in a ball on my lap—but she loved the play, she says), I asked my daughter what she wanted to be when she grows up.

    I was trying to make conversation, discuss life on a deeper level, figure out the workings of her mind (which is very different from mine). Her answer, however, wasn’t exactly what I was aiming for.

    “A grown-up,” she said.

    I snorted.

    Without missing a beat, she added, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    I don’t always understand the kid but I sure do think she’s funny.

    ***

    Speaking of that daughter…

    1. One evening when she was helping me load (two hundred dollars worth of) groceries out of the shopping cart and into the van, she hoisted up a bag filled with three boxes of store-brand cornflakes (99 cents each) and said, “If people saw us with all this cereal, they’d think we were spoiled!”

    Which warmed my heart right up. I love it that my child thinks she’s spoiled because we bought cornflakes.

    I really, really love it.

    2. You remember how she got her ears pierced last fall? Well, she kept having trouble with the left ear and about six weeks ago it got so infected that we finally told her to take the earring out and let it grow closed. We promised we’d get it pierced for her again once it healed.

    Weeks went by (she had every intention of being a pirate with one gold hoop for Halloween) and then last weekend her friend re-pierced the ear! It wasn’t all the way closed (though it looked like it from the front) and my daughter said it hardly even hurt. The friend poked the earring through back to front, so my daughter wore a reversed earring for a number of days before turning it around and becoming a normal, two-ear pierced little 10-year-old girl again.

    ***

    I am experimenting with English muffins and having an awful lot of fun doing it, too.

    The first batch wasn’t right, but the kids thought they were pretty wonderful. They ate all but two (plus the couple I ate) for lunch.

    What are you up to these days? Go on, tell me a story. I’m all ears and warty thumbs (er, thumb).