The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [123]
½ cup chopped walnuts, (optional)
2 tablespoons butter or oil
3 tablespoons honey
¼ cup buttermilk
2 medium-sized bananas, mashed
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Basic Rice Quick Bread
A plain, pretty loaf, somewhere on the pound-cake side of bread, but not too sweet for many kinds of sandwiches.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8″ 4″ loaf pan.
Sift together rice flour, potato flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt.
If you use butter, cream the honey and butter and then beat in the milk and eggs; if you use oil, simply mix them all together, then combine the wet and dry ingredients quickly and turn into the greased pan.
Bake about 45 minutes or a little longer. Let cool ten minutes, then tip the loaf out of the pan. Cool on rack for at least half an hour before cutting.
2 ½ cups brown rice flour
⅓ cup potato flour
⅓ cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons oil or butter
2 tablespoons honey
1 ⅔ cups milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Rice-Sesame Crackers
3 cups water
1 cup brown rice
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sesame seeds
This recipe is from The Good Goodies by Stan and Floss Dworkin (Rodale, 1974). The crackers are much better than the store-bought kind and are simple and easy to make once you get the hang of it.
Boil the water and add the rice and salt. Bring back to full boil, then cover and simmer over low flame for 45 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in the sesame seeds. Mash using a potato masher; be pretty vigorous about this.
When cool enough to handle, form the rice into two flat discs, pressing and squeezing to get the rice to stick together. Oil two baking sheets generously. Put one disc in the center of each sheet, then pat and press it into a flat rectangle, keeping the sides tidy. Cover with a sheet of waxed paper as big as the baking sheet, and roll with a rolling pin until it is as thin as possible; patching is quite legal. (Anyhow, the crumbles are as delicious as the crackers.) Remove the waxed paper and cut the dough into whatever size and shape please you.
Bake at 325°F for about 20 to 25 minutes, or until crisp; the edges usually lift off the baking sheet at this stage, and when you pull a piece off, it breaks quite crisply. The crackers will not brown very much.
*Corn may be tolerated also. When you see references to “corn gluten,” it is corn protein that is meant, not gluten in the allergic sense. Our recipe for Basic Cornbread is glutenfree.
†“Evaluation of the health aspects of cellulose and certain cellulose derivatives as food ingredients.” FASEB/SCOGS Report 25 (NTIS PB 274–667) 1974; cited in The Food Additives Book, Willis A. Gortner and Nicholas Freydberg, Bantam 1982.
Quick Breads & Muffins
For rounding out a simple dinner when time is short, or making Lunch out of lunch, a batch of muffins or a spicy loaf of Persimmon Bread can be just the thing. Quick breads offer variety, interest, and flexibility, complementing rather than competing with the long-rising breads that are our staff of life.
Without the fermentation period that gives yeasted breads their fullness of flavor, quick breads depend solely on their ingredients to give them pizzazz. Most quick bread recipes that we have seen roaming at large in the world call for a humongous amount of fat and, often, of sugar too. They are in fact not breads at all, but greasy cakes, hiding behind the unassuming innocence of names like “Wheat Germ Zucchini Loaf.” Tasty, but good grief! A whole cup of oil, and two of sugar in one loaf?
The breads in this section are lean by comparison to such delicacies, but they are just as delicious. Natural ingredients like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices supply their full, satisfying flavors. The recipes call for a minimum of fat and sweetener to make the breads tender and tasty. We have included flours and grains other than wheat here and there, and have tried to describe some of their possiblities and limitations. We who eat wheat bread every day welcome