Dang, I didn't realize it had been almost a month since I last wrote. I'm such a slacker.
I do have one excuse. For the past 12 days we've been out on our fishing boat working on the response to a small oil spill at the Valdez Marine Terminal. What that's meant is that we've been driving back and forth along a mile of shoreline dragging one side of an oil recovery boom. 16 hours a day for 12 days. Unable to get off the boat. At least we haven't seen any oil in the water - thank goodness for small favors.
Needless to say, I'm about to lose my mind. The reports I've been writing for my environmental consulting job are done, and I'm severely lacking in art supplies. Thanks to Jenny, I at least have my sketchbook - she did an emergency delivery for me.
The urge to eat all day is nearly overwhelming. It's bad enough when complying with stay-at-home COVID-19 mandates, but worse when stuck on a 50-foot boat with three other people and a dog. The cabin is less than 24-feet square. Yesterday I finally gave in and started baking. I don't have my Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Bread on the boat with me (did I mention we only had an hour to get to the boat with no idea of how long we were going to be out?), so I can't be working further on those recipes, but on the plus side, I can actually share a recipe with you in this post.
For years, my go-to bread recipe has been this:
1 c hot water
1 Tbsp yeast (or one packet)
1 tsp salt
3-4 c white flour
Pretty simple, no? That's it for one plain white bread loaf. If I want two loaves, I double the amounts. One caveat is that I never measure flour; I decide how much to use based on how the dough feels. I stir it in a little at a time until the dough forms a mass that doesn't stick to the bowl. At that point, I turn it out on a lightly floured kneading surface and sprinkle a little more flour on top to keep my hands from sticking to it. I'll keep adding sprinkles of flour as needed to keep it from being too sticky, but not so much that it gets tough. I'm looking for a soft, elastic dough that springs back if I poke it gently.
From the basic recipe, I amend it depending on what I want to make. Sometimes I use a tablespoon or two of sugar if I want it to rise faster. If I want a sweet bread, I'll use 1/4 cup or so of sugar. If I'm making pizza crust, I'll add a glug of olive oil at the end of kneading because that seems to allow the bread to stay rolled out better.
Yesterday, for my first oil spill loaf, I thought about making cinnamon rolls, but decided it was too much trouble, especially since I didn't have anything to make icing with. Instead, I made a cinnamon raisin loaf. To the above recipe I added 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon or so cinnamon, and about 3/4 cup raisins. I mixed all of that in before I started adding the flour 1/2 cup at a time. I found that the dough was very, very sticky from the cinnamon and sugar while I was kneading it, and I had to be careful not to add too much flour while kneading so that the dough didn't get tough. I let it rise once in the bowl until doubled, and then once in a greased and floured pan before baking at 375 for 15 minutes. I then turned the heat down to 325 for an additional 15 minutes. The bread turned out excellently - the crew gobbled it up before I could take a picture. It was sweet, but just a little, and had good cinnamon flavor. The amount of sugar, cinnamon, and raisins could easily be adjusted according to taste.
Today, with the first loaf mostly gone and me still being bored, I decided to experiment some more by making an oatmeal apple bread. After I sprinkled the yeast on the hot water, I stirred in 1 cup of quick-cooking oats (slow cooking work, too) and let them soak while I got the other ingredients ready. I added 1/3 cup sugar to the basic recipe. I made up the bread dough as normal and let it rise once until double in size. While it rose, I chopped up 2 cored, unpeeled Fuji apples and tossed them with 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon cinnamon. Once risen, I used a water-filled nalgene bottle as a rolling pin to roll the dough out to about 1/4" or so thick. I spread the apples out on the dough (I didn't butter it the way I would for sweet rolls), and rolled the whole mess up. To make sure I got my fair share of this batch, I cut the dough into four sections (one for each of us) and baked them together in an oiled and floured cake pan. They ended up kind of flat because the spread sideways rather than up when they rose, but after baking for 30 minutes at 350, they sure tasted good. Like the raisin bread, the apple bread was sweet, but not too sweet.
I have no idea how much longer we're going to be out here on the boat. I've heard a rumor that there's more flour and sugar under the starboard bunks in the fo'c's'le. Who knows what tomorrow might bring.
