Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [20]
4. Remove from the oven, break apart any large clumps, and cool. Store in a resealable plastic bag or 2-quart jar.
Makes 7 cups
GRAPE-NUTS
Since childhood I have been a Grape-Nuts devotee. I love that they’re not sweet, that they’re filling, and that they’re nutty without being unctuous and oily in the way of nuts. Grape-Nuts is my cereal.
And so, when I saw a recipe for Grape-Nuts in Kim Boyce’s multiple-prize-winning (and deserving) book, Good to the Grain (in which she calls them graham nuts), I had to try it.
Here’s how it went: First, I mixed a simple dough of whole-wheat flour, buttermilk, and brown sugar, and spread it on a cookie sheet. Then I baked this big flat cracker in a slow oven. It smelled lovely.
When the biscuit was baked, I broke it up into shards. Boyce directs you to put the pieces of biscuit through the grating attachment of a food processor, but since my grating attachment was broken, I tried other methods of pulverizing the biscuit: rubbing it on a box grater, chopping it with the metal blade in the food processor, hitting it with a rolling pin. Nothing broke the biscuit down into sufficiently small and evenly sized “nuts.” Finally, I carried the sack of roughly broken biscuit to my sister’s house and we ran it through the grating attachment of her food processor.
This was unpleasant. The roaring and crashing sounded like a wood chipper, and it woke my sister’s baby from his nap. That noise alone was enough to discourage me from making Grape-Nuts again. Moreover, the nubbly bits were not as uniform as what you get in the box—some emerged powdered, and some were overly chunky. And the cereal was sweeter and more fragrant than the Post product. That sounds like an improvement, but it’s not. If you truly embrace the Grape-Nut, you want a severe little pebble. One day Post might do something unforgivable, like oversweetening Grape-Nuts, and then I will be glad to have this recipe. Meanwhile, Grape-Nuts stays on the grocery list.
YOGURT
When I was growing up, my mother cultured yogurt in a Salton machine, but she really didn’t need one. Yogurt dates back millennia and was eaten throughout the Mediterranean and Indian subcontinent long before electricity, not to mention the Salton Corporation. You can make yogurt from a packaged starter; thicken it with gelatin and powdered milk; boil it and reduce it and augment with cream and swaddle the ripening container in towels or heating pads and generally make the process a lot more complicated and esoteric than it needs to be. Although the simple way is not always the best way, with yogurt it is. Homemade yogurt is richer and thicker and denser and (of course) fresher than anything on the shelf at the supermarket. No commercial yogurt can touch it, including the much-loved Fage.
Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: Minor
Cost comparison: A quart of homemade yogurt costs $1.75. The cheapest factory-made yogurt at Safeway: $3.15. Mountain High: $3.89. Fage: $8.00.
½ gallon milk (whole is best, but you can use 2%, 1%, or fat-free)
¼ cup yogurt (store-bought yogurt that contains live cultures, or homemade yogurt from a previous batch)
1. In a large saucepan over moderate heat, warm the milk until it is on the verge of a boil. You can either stir constantly to prevent the milk from sticking to the bottom of the pan, or spend five minutes scrubbing when you’re through. Your call.
2. Remove from the heat, pour the milk into a bowl, and let cool to lukewarm. If you’re in a hurry, you can put the bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice cubes; just don’t let the milk cool completely. It should be between 110 and 115 degrees F to activate the cultures. If you don’t have a thermometer, you should be able to put your clean finger in the milk and hold it there comfortably for 10 seconds, but still feel heat.
3. Stir the starter yogurt into the lukewarm milk. Cover with a clean, damp dish towel and leave the mixture undisturbed in a warm place overnight. Don’t get hung up on the temperature of the warm place. You can