Bread and the Lammas Man

As was mentioned over at Silverstar’s Magical Adventures, yesterday was Lammas, the First Harvest or Grain Harvest. What better way to celebrate than to bake some bread? Fortunately, the weather in Seattle was cooperative, being rainy and cool for a couple of days. So off I went to bake bread. I made two kinds, an oatmeal bread with lots of seeds, and a sweet bread with cinnamon, raisins and nuts. And just for Nurse Myra, I fashioned one of them into an anatomically correct Lammas Man.

Before we get to the pictures, we have a little business to take care of.

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Oatmeal seed bread

I haven’t felt like cooking lately, and it shows. First, I was too tired because Epona was down, then it was just too hot. I bought a loaf of $1.29 bread at the drug store a couple of times, but it just isn’t as good as home baked. Or at least a $4 loaf. So, with the coming of Lammas, and the temporarily cool weather, it was time to bake again. Back to my bread cookbook, (yes, I have a cookbook of nothing but bread) to find some recipes.

The book I use is called Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand by Bernice Ojakangas. The unique thing about this book is it tells you for each recipe how to make a small, medium or large loaf, and how to do it by hand, in a heavy-duty mixer with dough hooks, in a food processor, or in a bread machine. Cool book. I bought it from the used books section of Barnes and Noble. It hadn’t been used, though, it was just a remaindered book. But I got it for half-price.

I like my bread hearty and full bodied. I like a bunch of seeds in it. The first bread I decided to make was an oatmeal bread with lots of different seeds. Oatmeal bread is probably a misnomer, here. It does have oatmeal in it, but it also has a little cornmeal,  and is mostly whole wheat and bread flour. I put sunflower seeds, cracked wheat, sesame seeds and poppy seeds in it. All right, I heard that crack about how seedy I am.

I shaped this loaf as per usual, and baked it. And it is as good as I envisioned. Yummy.

The other loaf I decided to make was a whole wheat bread with cinnamon, raisins and nuts. I had made

Lammas Man

the dough for both of the breads and set them to rise while I went to the library. That’s one thing I love about bread dough. You can make it, and then apply some benevolent neglect for a bit while you do other things. The only disaster was that the food processor shook the container of whole wheat flour off the counter and spilled about half of it. Dang, as if my floor wasn’t dirty enough already.

Before I got around to shaping the dough, I noticed a comment from Nurse Myra for pictures of my Lammas bread. I don’t think she wanted just a loaf, I think she wanted to see an anatomically correct

Lammas Man close-up

Lammas man. So, although I had planned to just make this into a loaf, since I was going to use it for French toast anyway, I decided to accede to her wishes. Keep in mind that I don’t make my living as a bread sculptor. Hence, a anatomically correct Lammas Man. And made just the way I like my men, sweet, spicy, nutty, maybe a little fruity, and well-hung. Not to worry Daisy Fae, the um…appendage has been properly taken care of.