Food For Thought, or Maybe For A Nap

This is what is sitting on the table, waiting for the

kids to get home.

Since I got a flour mill a few months back, I have been milling my own Hard Red and Hard White wheat, and making various breads out of that. Without exception, they have all tasted WONDERFUL, and the only adaptation I had to make was to realize that without all the processing done to commercial flour you buy at the store, I'm probably not going to be making light and fluffy biscuits. 

I had a recipe for Banana Yeast Bread, and it was GOOD, but it really didn't have much banana taste. So, I just took a conventional recipe for banana bread and modified it. The results, you can see above. I had just a smidge, and it is YUMMY! It's so soft & moist, it reminds me more of pudding than bread.

Since I ground my own flour, substituted honey for sugar, and used lard in place of vegetable oil, I'm gonna claim this as a recipe that might have been presented at my birth home on the dirt road in Macon, GA, where I spent the first six years of my life.

PAPA PAT'S DIRT-ROAD HOME-STYLE BANANA BREAD

This makes some DELICIOUS banana bread. It's almost like pudding with a crust.almost like pudding.

The best bananas will be so over-ripe that they have started to leak.

Prep time, using the food processor, is next to nothing, particularly if you have milled the wheat ahead of time, or if you use store bread flour. THEREFORE, start pre-heating your oven as you begin to assemble your ingredients!

Ingredients

2 cups flour (I milled Hard White Wheat pastry-fine for this, bread flour will work)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup honey (or sugar or brown sugar)

4-8 very ripe bananas 

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup lard. (Original recipe calls for vegetable oil. I've used olive oil, but lard is best)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup raw nuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Dump all ingredients in a food processor, with puree blades.

Run it 4-5 minutes on puree setting to get totally homogeneous mix.

Pour the batter into a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. Bake for about 1 hour.

You're really gonna love this; the ONLY really limiting factor is that you have to get the bananas far enough in advance that they are very ripe. My grocer doesn't let any kinds of spots appear on his bananas, or he pulls them the shelf, so I have to get the bananas at LEAST a week in advance.

Peace be on your household.