The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [86]
With regard to pesticides, the law prohibits spraying orange trees for a specified number of days before the fruit is picked, and the pesticides on them are supposed to have degraded by that time. The law is for the safety of the pickers, as well as the consumer.
When the fruit is packed, smelly sheets of paper impregnated with fungicides are put into the carton. Currently, the fungicides used are diphenyl-o-phenylphenate and thiabendazole. The first is often incorporated in a wax and used to coat a whole panoply of fruits and vegetables, from apples to bell peppers. There have been tests on citrus peel itself, and the levels of the chemical have been well below FDA tolerance levels. O-phenylphenate, by the way, is the active ingredient in household disinfectants like Lysol, and is officially thought to be one of the safer poisons around (if there is such a thing.)
Thiabendazole, the second antifungal in the citrus papers, turns out to be what you give your cow or dog or, (if you run the zoo), your giraffe to rid it of intestinal worms. It has been extensively tested on mammals, to say the least, and is considered very safe.
If you think that no poison is safe and you can’t get untreated citrus peel, none of the recipes here will fail if the peel is omitted.
Nuts
Whether your style is Old-fashioned or Health Food, gourmet or homegrown, nuts probably rate pretty high on the list of goodies for making meals and treats more appealing. They contain substantial amounts of unsaturated fat, and so become rancid before long, if they are exposed to air or warmth. Keep nuts in the shell in a cool place, protected from damp; without shells, they need to be in the refrigerator, airtight; chopped—use them as soon as you can. Freezing is most effective, though it does destroy their natural vitamin E.
PECANS
In bread, so it seems to me, pecans rate the very highest marks for their unmistakable sweet sparkle. They keep their individuality, don’t become soggy, flavor the whole loaf, don’t weigh it down, and are universally appreciated. But who these days can afford them? If you can, just add ¼ to ½ cup chopped pecans to any plain or raisiny loaf. Terrific.
WALNUTS
Walnuts are a pretty good second, but since rather than sweet they are pleasantly bitter, they require extra sweetener to balance their flavor. (An unsweetened walnut loaf is vehemently nonsweet, but good in its own way.) The bitterness of walnuts can be reduced if the nuts are toasted slightly and cooled before using. Toasting helps prevent them from getting soft in yeasted doughs as the raw ones will, when they are there from beginning to end; but toasted or not, they do tend to color the dough a sort of lavender-gray, unless you add them just before shaping. Walnuts provide a natural flavor balance to sweet fruits, particularly raisins, and they are outstanding with oatmeal.
ALMONDS
Last year a friend gave us some tiny almonds that had been grown on an organic farm: they had three times the flavor of larger almonds from the store, and when toasted, made a terrifically flavorful addition to bread. Normal almonds, even if they are toasted—and it helps—don’t always have enough oomph to make much of a show in a loaf of bread. If you think your almonds are pretty blah and don’t consider it cheating, you can spike them with a teaspoonful of almond extract—(but you can spike soy grits with almond extract and get nearly the same effect, with some other advantages).
CASHEWS, BRAZILS, & FILBERTS
Cashews are even subtler than almonds in yeasted breads, but not brazil nuts. If you add a half-cup of chopped brazils to any loaf, the flavor is unmistakable, and the nuts keep their crunch to the last—it is a crispy crunch, almost more like raw celery than like a nut, but the flavor is there, singing out. Filberts too keep their splendid pungent sweetness, and