35 - Persimmon Bread

I don't think I'd ever heard of persimmons before moving to California. And although once here, I’d see them glowing bright orange at farmer’s markets, I’d never been bold enough to buy one. I'd seen them at farmer's markets for years bright orange--in two varieties-- I don't believe I ever bought them.

This all changed in 1991 when we became shareholders in the Moore Ranch Community Supported Agriculture farm. Now CSA’s are ubiquitous, but they were relatively obscure then.

Each week we’d receive a box of freshly picked produce. I had to learn how to prepare all sorts of new vegetables from kohlrabi to persimmons.

Steve Moore, the farmer, wrote a newsletter full of facts and recipes each week. I learned there were two varieties --Fuyu--rounder--sold crisp and eatable--and Hachiya--more triangular. He grew Fuyus, which were delicious uncooked, but we got so many we couldn’t keep up and I soon was regularly baking persimmon bread.

During those persimmons years, I combined Steve's recipe with two clipped from the papers and one from James Beard. Sweet and dark, the bread was delicious with cream cheese, reminding of the date nut bread and cream cheese sandwiches I used to eat with my mother at Schrafft's in my long ago and largely fictive New York city childhood (easily conflated with my actual Jersey City childhood).

For two loaves:

Grease two standard loaf pans.

Preheat oven to 350. Beat two eggs until light and foamy. Add 1 cup (2 sticks) melted butter, 2 cups sugar, 2 cups pulp of fuyu persimmons (those would be the round ones), and 1 tsp. lemon juice. Stir in 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans and 1 cup raisins.

Mix together dry ingredients: 3 cups sifted flour, 2 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp. ground cloves, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon. Add to persimmon mixture--and stir until just blended.

Pour into loaf pans and bake for one hour--until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool on wire racks.

36 - Banana Bread

Banana bread is something I made for years and years and years. Sweet and rich, bursting with butter and sugar, with a dark healthy look (thanks to those very ripe bananas), is seemed like a perfect food. It was also incredibly economical. You turn bananas that look ready for the compost heap into a relatively healthy breakfast/snack food.

In the days of a full house, I bought lots of bananas. Sometimes they'd get eaten--sometimes they wouldn’t-- but no matter. There was always banana bread (and even simpler, smoothies with frozen bananas).

This is eminently easy. As a quick yeastless bread, it demands no kneading or rising.

The recipe I use comes from an autographed copy of James Beard’s 1973 classic, Beard on Bread. Pearl Bresev, the wife of my mother’s doctor in Jersey City had some connection with the book, and perhaps my mother went to a signing to get a copy inscribed with a most flamboyant flourish -Good Loaves for Naomie (sic)--James Beard

The publication date was 1973, so I imagine my mother must have gone to some sort of signing with Pearl Bresev, the good doctor's wife, who is one of eight people thanked in an acknowledgment. I remember my mother telling me about this connection--but have no idea of how she actually got the signed book.

Pages 170 and 171 are magnificently yellowed and speckled with mementos of many loaves.

Sift 2 Cups flour, with 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cream 1/2 cup butter and gradually add 1 cup granulated sugar. Mix well. Add 2 eggs and 1 cup mashed, very ripe bananas (two or three). Combine 1/3 cup milk with 1 teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar--this will curdle the milk. Slowly and alternately fold in the flour mixture and milk mixture into the eggs and bananas, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Blend well after each addition. Stir in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and pour into a lavishly buttered 9x5x3 inch pan (classic loaf pan) and bake in a preheated 350 oven for 1 hour until the bread springs back when lightly touched in the center.

37 - Parker House Rolls

These rolls--from the Greene on Greens cookbook (one reason why we love Mr. Greene- are made with mashed potatoes--so surely they should be included in a vegetable cookbook, no?)

I've been making them for years beginning with long ago Thanksgivings but also for Katya's Christmas dinners. They are always a grand thing to contribute to a meal--hot and buttery--and a vegetable to boot!

The rolls might have special importance in our family meals. If there is an ample supply for Sam, they bring him such joy, we don't have to worry if there are not quite enough non-meat dishes on the menu.

Last Thanksgiving, Sam, in charge of making the rolls, called for recipe specifics. I gave him the instructions over the phone. He typed them on his computer and promptly e-mailed it back to me. Here it is in a quite proper recipe format:

1 c. milk
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp salt
1 pkg. dry yeast
Two large eggs (lightly beaten)
1 c. mashed potatoes (make these before you begin--two or three small potatoes will be more than enough--mash with milk-- you don't have to make proper buttery, salt and peppered mashed potatoes--though you could)
5 1/2 c. all-purpose flour (approx)
8 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
3 tbsp butter for inside of rolls.
2 tbsp butter (melted) to brush outside


(1) Scald milk. (Very hot, not boiling). Let cool in large bowl to luke warm.
(2) Add sugar, salt to milk, stir well.
(3) Stir in yeast, let stand two minutes
(4) Beat in eggs, mashed potatoes, and 1 1/2 c. flour. Do not over beat. Some lumps will remain.
(5) Let stand till bubbly, 5 min.
(6) Add 8 tbsps melted butter. Stir in remaining flour, one cup at a time, until smooth and not sticky. Keep adding flour if it’s too wet.
(7) Transfer to floured board, knead two min., adding more flour if necessary. You should have a ball of soft, smooth dough.
(8) Place dough in well-buttered large bowl. Turn dough, coat w/ butter.
(9) Let stand until tripled in size (warm place). This could take several hours--especially if you live in a cold house.

Pull off pieces of dough slightly larger than a ping-pong ball. Flatten w/ hands. Using floured knife, make creased down each. Lightly butter one half, fold it over, seal together. Place roll seam-side up on buttered sheet, brush with 3 tbsp melted butter. Cover loosely and let rise 40 minutes.


Pre-heat oven to 400. Bake rolls till lightly browned, 15-18 minutes.

That’s more or less it--makes plenty of rolls--and they're great as leftovers, for breakfast with jam, etc....

38 - Almost No-Knead Bread

This is a fairly recent addition to the repertoire.   I first learned it (as most of us did) from Mark Bittman in his column in the New York Times. It was created by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery. When Mark’s article appeared –the day after Election Day in 2006—it was the most e-mailed recipe for a week. I imagined that all good citizens (at least New York Times readers) were ready to retreat from the news of the day, and watch their breads slowly rise.

I actually had intermittent luck with the original recipe. It worked splendidly when I made many loaves at my sister’s house deep in the north woods with a wood fire keeping us all warm and cozy, but my own home, which is not so warm rarely provides the right environment—and though the bread was always delicious—the process was always stickier and messier than I would want.

But, this year, Cook’s Illustrated printed a variation that seemed to solve those problems. Here’s my variation of their variation:

Mix together: 3 cups flour, ¼ tsp. dry yeast, and 1 tbsp. salt. Add 1 cup water, 1/3 cup beer (there is of course internet discussion about best kinds—I couldn’t tell the difference—so would say anything goes), and 1 tbsp. white vinegar. Stir until just combined.

Put in a buttered bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise from 12 to 14 hours. I usually go with about twenty hours—but again, variations are possible.

Put on a lightly floured surface and knead 15-20 strokes. Shape into a ball. Cover again with oiled plastic wrap, and place one piece of parchment paper, if you have it. Let rise another two hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees—when it’s hot put in the Dutch oven with cover in which you’ll bake the bread. Leave it in oven for one half hour. I use my big black cast iron pot—a smaller one would give a higher bread, which I think I’d prefer. Again, you can experiment.

Remove the pot and lower oven temperature to 425 degrees. Score and lightly flour surface of bread. Pick up the bread (on its parchment paper) and place it into the Dutch oven. Bake for 30 minutes with cover on and an additional 20-30 minutes uncovered.

It should be wonderfully brown and crusty. Remove from oven and let at least an hour. Whatever you think about the pleasures of just baked bread, I promise you, it’s best if you wait a bit.