My 1945 breakfast menu for tomorrow includes Toasted Bran Bread, so I was poking around today looking for recipes - figuring it would be just a quick bread. Well, there is a recipe in my cookbook for Date Bran Bread, but it calls for the bread to be steamed for three hours! I have never steamed anything before, but I'm giving this a try. My largest pot isn't big enough for more than one of the small loaf pans, and I don't have any used coffee cans or other metal cans hanging about, so, after doing some research online, I bought one of those aluminum foil roasters, placed water in the bottom with some stones to raise the loaf pans above the water. Covered the filled loaf pans tightly with foil and slid the whole affair inside a 350-degree oven. I have no idea if this is going to work.
This is another of those instances where the author of the cookbook seems to take for granted that her readers have some basic skills most of us no longer learn from our mothers and grandmothers. Steaming bread. Making jam from dried fruit.
It will be six weeks tomorrow since I set forth on The Great Housekeeping Experiment. Six very interesting weeks. I realized the other day that I have a much healthier-looking, better stocked fridge than I've had in years. There are grapefruits and oranges inside, together with some dried apricots and prunes in sealed containers. A couple varieties of juice - and milk and eggs that are still fresh! (That used to be a rarity.) My cupboards are better stocked than they've been in a long time: Shredded Wheat, Malt-O-Meal, rolled oats, cornmeal, Wheatena, flour, wheat bran... These were the building blocks of a '40s wintertime breakfast. If a housewife kept these items on hand, she'd be able to put a variety of breakfasts on the table.
And speaking of breakfast - these vintage menus are just as carb-heavy as I anticipated, but it's easy to adapt them to be a little friendlier to the waistline. What I've been finding - much to my surprise - is that I've come to feel a real sense of pride in making a pot of non-gummy oatmeal, lump-free cornmeal mush, and farina with just the right amount of water. I've also been getting to know my stovetop better. Just where the heat needs to be set to get the water to boil quickly, how far to lower it to keep a good simmer going. It's funny to feel so accomplished when it comes to things most of my friends wouldn't get very excited about.
Good news! I just checked my oven and the batter I left inside those loaf pans actually appears to be turning into bread!!! I'd say they're just about done. Maybe five more minutes.
Something else I've learned in the last six weeks: when I pick up the things in my bedroom and living room everyday, the job is fairly easy each time. The same goes when it comes to the breakfast dishes. Tidy begets tidy, so when my bedroom is picked up, I don't want to set something down where it doesn't belong. It's kind of nice to keep these rooms picked up by putting things back where they belong in the first place. My living room also seems a whole lot more spacious, and, boy, is it nice to come home to a dark apartment and not have to worry about stumbling over something as I'm looking for the light switch.
I've also discovered that my sleeping habits stink. In the American Home article I mentioned several days ago, the author writes that she wakes every day at 6:30 - no matter what the day of the week. This has got to be a whole lot easier on the body than my own habit of burning the midnight oil and sleeping in as late as possible, getting up at a different time nearly every day. I've got a long road to go, so this will be something I'll try and fold into my routine over time.
As I finish writing this, I'm enjoying a slice of my own Bran Bread, fresh from the oven. I can't believe I pulled this off! It's nice and moist, too. I ended up baking it for about 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees F. I'm definitely freezing one of these loaves so I don't have to go through this again for quite some time...
3 comments:
Brava! Good show! I just 'mastered' the steaming a few years back, tho really only used it at xmas with my plum pudding. I remember, with trepidation, filling the antique mold placing the lid on and butting it in water thinking, "how on earth is THAT going to make anything" It was SO good and moist, as u say. I would LOVE to use steaming and boiling of bread in my day to day so will u PLEASE post this recipe? I want to try it in my pudding mold and see if it is anygood. I want to start using exclusively homebaked bread. It is easy to buy it, but I think it rather pricey compared to what it must cost to just bake it urself. Thanks so much.
sounds great! I don't think I've ever steamed bread... sounds like a new adventure for me
I didn't really plan for the bran bread to be finished by the time I finished the post, but it was fun to be able to report on the results in the very same post! I was expecting the bread to take a good few hours, but it surprised me... I suspect the bread was more baked than it was steamed, but it has some of the qualities of steamed bread.
The 1945 cookbook I was using gave no directions as to how to steam the bread. I guess they just assumed this was common knowledge. Most of the sources I was able to come up with online seem to agree that using one of those big stockpots or jam kettles on your stovetop is best. There are some folks out there using pressure cookers or crock pots to steam bread. I was working purely on instinct by trying it in the over with the pan of steamy water just beneath --- and I'm still surprised it worked.
The bran bread made wonderful toast this morning. Looks alot like a small, dense loaf of whole grain bread, but tastes more like a bran muffin. I'll definitely add the recipe to my next post. Thanks for your comments!
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