The midweek baking

A loaf of Buttermilk Oatmeal Bread makes sandwiches and toast for about three days. The bread-machine process takes about 3½ hours from start to finish so I don't always have enough time to make another loaf on Wednesday to get Brad and Cass through the rest of the week. In that case, I make Brown Soda Bread, which takes all of an hour to make, start to finish, including baking time.

As with macaroni and cheese, I searched high and low for a recipe for brown soda bread that I was really happy with. I tried recipes by Alice Waters, Darina Allen, Cook's Country, Farmette, and even a yeasted version by David Lebovitz (which I guess can be brown bread but not soda bread). They were all good but none of them knocked my socks off. Then I came across this recipe on Sweet Amandine, which Jessica Fechtor adapted from Bon Appétit magazine. Coincidentally, I had flagged the same recipe in The Bon Appétit Cookbook, another great find that I picked up at the Friends of the Library book sale for $3. I'm not sure what makes this version so different but it tastes great and is easy, too. You can throw it together in an hour if you need some bread with dinner, or to make sandwiches to get you through the rest of the week.

Brown Soda Bread

Adapted from The Bon Appétit Cookbook (2006) by Barbara Fairchild and Sweet Amandine (adapted, in turn, from Bon Appétit (May 1996))

This is another great one-bowl recipe to make using your kitchen scale. The mixture of whole wheat flour, 3 tablespoons toasted wheat bran, and 3 tablespoons toasted wheat germ used in the original recipe supposedly "approximates the nutty-textured Irish brown flour." Since I don't usually keep wheat bran or wheat germ around, I went with Jessica's Fechtor's substitutions of quick oats and ground flax seeds, which are ingredients I always have on hand. Using stone ground whole wheat flour helps achieve some of that "nutty texture," but it tastes good with white whole wheat flour, too.

210 grams (1¾ cups) all-purpose flour
200 grams (~1¾ cups) stone ground whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour
17 grams (3 tablespoons) "quick" oats
6 grams (1 tablespoon) golden flaxseed meal
25 grams (2 tablespoons) packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
28 grams (2 tablespoons) chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces
484 grams (2 cups) buttermilk

    1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Spray a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. Weigh the first seven ingredients (everything but the butter and the buttermilk) into a large bowl, then whisk them together thoroughly. Break up any clumps of brown sugar with the whisk or your fingers.
    2. Scatter the butter pieces over the flour mixture and squeeze them between your fingertips (you washed your hands first, right?) to flatten them out. It's fun, like playing with sand. When the mixture is a little bit coarse and no large pieces of butter remain, weigh the buttermilk into the bowl and stir with a rubber spatula until the liquid is just incorporated. Don't overmix. The dough will be moist and shaggy.
    3. Scrape the dough into the pan and smooth the top a bit with the spatula. Bake until the crust is dark brown and a tester inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Turn the loaf out onto a rack and cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. I like this bread best with good butter, but it makes good toast and cheese sandwiches, too. It doesn't keep well, however, 2 or 3 days tops wrapped in aluminum foil.