The Hard Boiled Cook

You can make a loaf of excellent bread by dipping out 3 cups of flour ( like unbleached but who cares) and putting this aside. Put 2/3 cup of warm water in a bowl, add a pinch of salt, half a stick of butter, 1/4 cup of agave nectar (the cheapest), and a couple of tablespoons of flax meal of you want healthy stuff. Heat this up in the microwave a bit until the butter is just melting or real soft, add an egg, and stir this stuff up. Best thing is to check the temperature at this point and bring the bowl of liquid up to about 118 degrees F. Pour into a mixer with a regular spade blade (no dough hooks please) and start mixing. Add a tablespoon of dry yeast, mix some more, then add all except a few tablespoons of flour a serving spoonful at at time until the whole thing is a rather firm, yet sticky mess. Add a teaspoon of water if it gets too dry. Scrape it out using a spatula onto the left over flour which you should have spread out on a cutting board. Now, don’t knead this too much because you don’t need to (a there’s a pun). Just kind of push it together roughly, taking up most of the dry flour you had on the board. Butter up that loaf pan real well and push the dough into the bottom of the pan, distributing it evenly. If you want a thicker crust, wet your hand and slap a bit of water on it. Put the pan with dough in a warm place. I use a couple of foil turkey roasting pans turned back to back over the pan and placed on my warmer at the back of the stove. If you got it right, you should start heating the oven right away because in about 20 minutes your going to need to start baking it.

Bake at 375 for 50 minutes on a middle shelf in the oven. Take it out, dump it out on a rack immediately, and wait five minutes before you cut a hefty slice off one end, slather it with a thick layer of butter, savor the flavor, and wonder why in the world everybody else seems to think bread-making takes hours.

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