Night of the Living Bread

Bread just doesn’t taste right when it comes out of a bread machine. It’s such a sim­ple thing to make from scratch, so why is it so scary?

I think it’s the yeast. We don’t under­stand yeast. Yeast is weird.

It’s alive, yet not in the same way an oys­ter is alive. Yeast is in a state of sus­pended ani­ma­tion just wait­ing for a lit­tle warm water and a few sugar crys­tals to fully come to life.

It’s kind of like Voldemort.

Get over your fear of the undead yeast. Follow this recipe and you will end up with deli­cious bread that tastes like it came straight from Ma Ingall’s oven.

Keppy Bread

Named after a young man who threw all this together with­out a recipe and ended up with beau­ti­fully risen and totally edi­ble bread, thus giv­ing him the con­fi­dence to bake bread with abandon.

Ingredients

3 tsp. yeast in a cof­fee mug of warm water with a slight sprin­kling of sugar

1/4 cup Red River cereal

1 sweet potato, grated

1 tsp. salt

1/4 cup or so of hot water

hand­ful sun­flower seeds

approx. 2 or 3 Tbslp. molasses

3 Tblsp. butter

1 egg

flour, 1 cup at a time until you can’t incor­po­rate any more

Steps

1. Put the ket­tle on to boil.
2. Mix together Red River, sweet potato, salt, sun­flower seeds, molasses and butter.
3. Pour a lit­tle boil­ing water over the mix­ture, enough to make a thick soup. Let cool.
4. Once cool, mix in one egg and the yeast mix­ture. The yeast should be frothy with life. Then begin­ning adding flour. Once the mix­ture is in a knead­able state begin kneading.
5. Make sure to soak the bowl in warm, soapy water while knead­ing. Once fin­ished knead­ing the bowl will be easy to clean.
6. Dry the newly cleaned bowl and pour in a few drops of oil. Put kneaded bread into oiled bowl, cover and let rise 90 minutes.
7. Punch down and cut into 3 loaves, place into oiled bread pans. Preheat oven to 400. Cover and let rise another 45 minutes.
8. Bake at 400 for 15 min­utes, then turn oven down to 375 for 15–20 min­utes. To test done­ness just tap the top of the bread, if it sounds hol­low it’s ready.
9. Tip out of bread pans and let cool on rack.
10. You just made bread, you con­quered the undead!

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