I found myself on Wednesday trying to remember to write "fruit bread" on the shopping list, as it's a good thing to have sliced in the freezer as a good snack for the kids (and myself) for morning or afternoon tea. Very nice toasted with butter. Mmmm.
Then I had a light bulb moment, and decided to bake my own. I've made variations on this recipe on and off for years - we found it in an old fund-raiser recipe book for La Leche League, that Merl's Mum had. It is excellent - just mix it in a bowl, stick it in the loaf tins, rise it and bake it - no kneading! Also, much cheaper and more nutritious than store-bought bread.
Here's the basic recipe. To make fruit bread, add 1Tb cinnamon and 1Tb mixed spice or garam marsala to the dry ingredients, and about 1 cup raisins (or other dried fruit) to the wets.
"Pat's Bread" - La Leche League NZ Mothering Time Cookbook, 1977
Yields two moist nutritious loaves - particularly delicious toasted
1. Put into bowl
- 1 1/2 pints (900mL) warm water
- 1 Tablespoon dried yeast
- 1 good dessertspoon treacle or molasses
2. Put into a large bowl
- 2lb (910g) wholemeal flour
- 1 round dessertspoon salt
4. Beat the liquid with a rotary beater and pour into a well in the flour and salt. Mix togethr and put into the two tins.
5. Leave in a warm place to rise and then bake about 40 minutes at 190degC (375degF).
The bread turned out even better than I remember. Highly recommended!
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6 comments:
while treacle, dessertspoon, wholemeal, and afternoon tea are foreign ideas to me, it sounds like good stuff! I've been making some sourdough lately, and loving it...
Treacle is just like molasses, but not quite so dark.
A dessertspoon is a spoon you would eat dessert with - it's not really an exact measure - I use a normal big spoon from my cutlery drawer
Wholemeal is another word for 'wheatmeal' I guess - wheat flour with bran bits in it?
Afternoon tea is just our mid-afternoon snack. :)
I tried sourdough some years ago and my starter went bad :( This week I'm trying sproutbread! no yeast, no flour, no nothing - just soaked and sprouted whole wheat berries, pulverised and baked. Will be interesting if nothing else!
Hm... I take it you eat dessert with different spoons than you might eat other things? We have (I think) 'teaspoons' which are, um, spoons (not the measuring kind). They are different than soup spoons, but I use them for tea, or dessert, or anything. I'm gonna have to google this. :)
Do you have tea with your midafternoon snack?
No, I mostly drink coffee :) "Morning tea" and "afternoon tea" are vocabulary hang-overs from our British colonial past. Most New Zealanders use them to just mean their morning snack and their afternoon snack, respectively. Confusingly, we often refer to our evening meal as 'tea' also :) But that's a whole different issue...
I'd use a tablespoon measure in the absence of a dessert-spoon.
What we call 'teaspoons' are 5mL ones for stirring hot drinks.
Our dessert spoons are about as big as a soup spoon but oval-shaped.
It's this sort of confusion that has me avoiding US cookbooks on the whole - even your 'cup' is different to ours! Usually it doesn't make a big difference, but sometimes the cookies flow off the edge of the baking tray...
I'm looking forward to trying out this recipe. I was just wondering approximately how long you let it rise for before baking?
Thanks a lot!
David
I rise it in the oven, set to the lowest possible temperature - I've heard it referred to as "cat temperature" (if you slide your hand under a sleeping cat - about that temperature). It can vary in time - one to two or so hours.
I just leave it until its risen to near the top of the loaf-tin, take it out of the oven, turn the oven to the baking temperature and once it's up to temp, put the loaves back in.
good luck!
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