Bread of life

For several weeks, my husband has been on a restrictive diet prior to some testing, a diet that excludes all iodine, dairy, canned veggies, prepared foods, and more.  Using non-iodized salt, I can easily make many of the normal dishes we eat, but almost everything has to be from scratch.

To this end, I brought out my neglected bread machine, as all bread you buy (unless labeled “no-salt”) has, at the very least, iodized salt and perhaps other forbidden things.  I made a simple French bread first–flour, water, salt, sugar, and yeast.  Then I reached back into my recipe file and made part-white, part-wheat rolls.

If you choose, you may use the machine only for mixing the dough and letting it rise, then shape and bake it outside the machine.  That’s what I did with the rolls.  Here’s the dough at the end of the hour-and-a-half dough cycle.

I roll the dough into a rope, then cut it into 12 somewhat similar sections. Each gets rolled into a ball and put in a muffin cup.  After a twenty-minute rising time in a warm oven, the rolls are ready to put in the oven to transform from dough into rolls.

Voilà!  I have a dozen rolls.  To gild the lily, the house is now permeated with the indescribably delicious smell of freshly baked bread!  How is it possible for a smell to carve a whole in my stomach that immediately need to be filled only by fresh bread?  When our daughters were still at home and I used the bread machine almost every night, it was a sad day the day we grew so used to the divine smell of baking bread that we no longer noticed it!

I’ve realized from this experience of having to make virtually everything from scratch, how easy it is to use prepared foods, most of which not only aren’t as good for us as well as more costly, but often don’t taste nearly as good.

I’m sure once we’re back to what passes for normal in our house, I won’t make every single thing by scratch, although I will be making ravioli for Christmas dinner as well as the walnut sauce.  But the experience has kicked me back into a better place for cooking and eating and for that, I’m grateful.

After you’ve made ravioli, “make” the ravioli!

While homemade ravioli are wonderful with any sauce, to gild the ravioli lily, make this simple, unusual, and delicious sauce. It’s the sauce that makes the ravioli, even though you thought you already did.