It's been a long day. So sue me if I can't come up with a better title.
The time change is kicking my tail something fierce. I'm generally a morning person. So my mornings shifting around on me causes a bit of chaos. Add to that the fact that Austin is further south, so the light is brighter and I'm a bit tired and cranky. I also shifted my bedroom around and now realize I need to get better window coverings. Dark room GOOD. Bright light BAD.
This too shall pass.
Today marks the second time I've baked bread for this challenge. Last week I used a modified South Beach recipe. The result was a bit salty for my liking. It used ground oats and whole wheat flour as the base. Now given that most folks believe that Irish Soda Bread is full of fruit bits, this is a sensible alteration. I started doing a bit of looking and discovered that true Irish Soda bread has no fruit. Or butter. Or shortening. Or any particularly evil things in it. Just wheat flour, soda, salt, and buttermilk.
Two of the these three ingredients have been villianized in the last several years. I looked, thought a bit, and concluded that so long as I watch portion size, this should be fine. We will discuss the fact that finding whole fat buttermilk apparently takes an act of Congress at a later date. This experiment with food used the low fat version, but still turned out edible. Actually it turned out quite tasty.
Bread is considered a staple food world wide. This means it can be made any time of year and is a fundamental component of the local diet. The history of bread goes way the heck back to Neolithic times. That means it is incredibly stinking OLD. I shall note that the Romans and Greeks both noshed on bread. If you look at classical sculpture from both cultures, I see six pack abs on the guys. So I'm kinda thinking it can't be all bad.
Now my bread has 4 ingredients. I did a little looking online. I found one mix that called for Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron,
thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid), wheat flour, sugar,
buttermilk (dry cultured skim milk), potato flour, baking soda, salt, eggs, and butter.
That would be more than 4. There are two ingredients a thrid grader can't pronounce, and several things that aren't called for in traditional Irish Soda Bread recipes.
Fact of the matter is, Irish Soda Bread is not a high end dish. It was designed for people who were poor. And I mean seriously poor. Adding sugar, eggs, and butter was not very likely for a daily meal. Simple reason is they were expensive items and in the case of eggs and butter, potential money makers.
It took me 5 minutes to mix up the bread bits, and 25 minutes to bake. That's less time than required for the pre-mixed version which quotes 10 minutes to prep and 35 to bake. So quicker bread, with ingredients I can pronounce, and very in line with the historical product…shall we guess which version is better for me?
So today's lesson is, take the extra 10 minutes to look for alternatives to "healthy" recipes. You may discover something better for you and learn something new in the process.
I've learned that I'm a serious food geek. When you are considering the merits of getting a blood glucose monitor so you can use yourself as a guinea pig…there are issues.
With that, off to bed. I've got a deadline looming and revisions calling my name early in the am.