Bread Idea

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Bread is my weakness. More than candy, etc. A bakery in Falls Church Va, made a strange looking pink bread with tomatoes and Italian herbs that was sooo very good. It was soft and moist like store bought white bread, but extremely tasty An Amish bakery over in Lancaster PA, makes a peach cinnamon streusel swirl bread that is more like a slice of pie than bread. There was a bakery in Hershey PA that made bread with capricola, black olives and provolone chunks in it. Loved that stuff. My local Aldi's gets a dark brown coconut sweet dinner roll that is like a Pumpernickel version of King's Hawaiian rolls. A bakery in Hyattsville, MD made a dark Russian Black bread with hints of molasses, orange and chocolate in it. I would try to get there just after it was taken out of the oven to get it fresh and sometimes I had eaten the entire loaf on the way home. A West Virginia woman, I knew years ago, made a bread with sausage, egg and cheese in it. She made it for when her family went deer hunting. Now that was so good toasted. At the farmer's market near Mannheim, PA, a stand sells giant soft pretzels that weigh about 1 pound each. We would slice them for sandwiches. (very similar dough to bagels)

[John K Jordan]

Mark, we did make the strawberry bread on Saturday, and because of your comment on basil and my Lovely Bride's reminder of the Strawberry/Basil sauce we first had in a hilltop restaurant in the center of Italy, our bread was strawberry/basil and it is delicious, but not much left!

This also spurred panna cotta in the fridge and a fresh batch of strawberry/basil sauce to dribble over fruit on top. Ooo.
Just put 1 to 1-1/2 cup strawberries, a bit of confectionery sugar and a couple of basil leaves in the food processor.

JKJ

[Jeff Bartley]

Bravo on your oven build Roger! If you're reading this and haven't checked out Roger build thread on his oven I'd highly recommend checking it out.

Question for you Roger: is the insulation important only for winter use? I've seen many ovens that are simply brick domes, is it safe to assume that those without insulation will work but will just lose heat faster?

[Mark Blatter]

Mark, we did make the strawberry bread on Saturday, and because of your comment on basil and my Lovely Bride's reminder of the Strawberry/Basil sauce we first had in a hilltop restaurant in the center of Italy, our bread was strawberry/basil and it is delicious, but not much left!

This also spurred panna cotta in the fridge and a fresh batch of strawberry/basil sauce to dribble over fruit on top. Ooo.
Just put 1 to 1-1/2 cup strawberries, a bit of confectionery sugar and a couple of basil leaves in the food processor.

JKJ

I ended up making a sweet bread instead. I did pear/cranberry with a little basil. End result was it was pretty good, but could not taste the basil. I used some pear juice as part of the water, then added about a cup of pear sauce (you know like apple sauce but from pears) plus two pears diced up. Used a cup of diced dried cranberries. Normally my bread dough is easy to form into loaves. The sweet bread had too much liquid and I had to 'pour' it from the scale to the pan. I weigh my bread so them loaves are uniform in size. I gave some out to friends to get their thoughts. One guy and his wife are still annoyed with me because I have given them about six loaves in the past four weeks and both have gained 5 pounds. Another couple across the street called and said they had eaten four sliced toasted the night I gave it to them, and finished the loaf the next morning. Weight gain with breads is not optional.

What I will change for the next batch is to reverse the pear and cranberry, making a cranberry sauce to infuse the entire batch, with added diced cranberries, then add three pears diced. Infusing the bread with pears puts too much sweetness into it and using cranberries will make it seem less sweet. I will also need to double or triple the basil amount so it is stronger, but not over-powering. Using orange is an interesting idea, which I will have to incorporate with something else.


With summer coming I will try out using a number of fruits, strawberry, orange, perhaps mango and cherries too.