A Rainy Day and Bread

What else do you do on a rainy day?
I mean on a seriously rainy day.
The fifth gray, dreary one in a row.

You stay home and bake. You fill your house with the warm yeasty curls of aroma that make everyone who enters head straight for the kitchen with their nose twitching.

But you don't spend hours kneading and pounding and waiting, then kneading and pounding and waiting some more.

No.

You bake this quick, yeasty, yay!-fresh-bread! loaf, and you make yourself a cup of mint tea with honey and curl up in your big red leather chair with your favourite book and escape to sunny climes while the oven and the yeast do their secret work and the rain runs in cozy rivulets down the windowpane.

But don't tell anyone else the secret.
(And don't forget the obligatory smear of flour on your cheek.)


Maybe it'll rain again tomorrow.


Quick Yeast Bread
3 cups wholewheat or spelt flour
3/4 cup mixed grains or a mixed 7-grain breakfast cereal - the kind you have to cook (I use 1/4 cup cracked wheat + 1/4 cup coarse cornmeal + 1/4 cup wheat germ)
1 Tbsp instant yeast
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 + 3/4 cups hot tap water

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Mix dry ingredients together and place in oiled loaf tin. (I like the 4"x9"x 2.75"high size because it makes taller slices.) Shape into a loaf with a spatula. Sprinkle the top with some more of the mixed grains or some seeds. Leave to rise for 20 minutes in a warmish place (the range on top of the preheated oven works well). 

Bake  for 40 minutes.
Let cool in pan for a few minutes, then turn out on to rack to cool.

Makes 1 large loaf.

 

Gluten-Free Quick Yeast Bread

In place of flour, use a good wholegrain gluten-free flour mix. I like to use Gluten-Free Girl's whole grain mix using 100 grams each flour: almond, quinoa, amaranth, millet, sorghum, buckwheat and teff plus 100 grams each starch: arrowroot, potato and tapioca. Shake it all up and use the required amount for this recipe.)

In place of the mixed grains, use a mixture of 2 Tbsp each: teff grain, amaranth grain, millet grits, buckwheat hot cereal grits, oat bran and ground flax. (You could use any combination of the above, or just several of them, as long as you have 3/4 cup total. I would include the ground flax, though, no matter which other grains you use. Flax helps hold the dough together.)

Continue as for the regular recipe above. It turns out really well for me.