...)
Banana bread is one of the other things I reinvented pretty early on–there are always a few bananas that no one wants to eat that you have to do something with! In addition, Sean really likes to eat it for breakfast :-). Unfortunately, though Sean liked some of the versions I produced from recipes found on the internet, I didn’t. My tongue was accustomed to something sweeter and lighter. This isn’t quite identical to the “add two cups of sugar” version from my childhood, but I find it a very good compromise, since the whole wheat flour and natural sugars are much better for me! It is still moist, bouncy and banana-y, and really, what more could you ask for?
| When I made my final test batch of bread sticks, there were plenty of people over at my apartment, including an old friend who’d been out of the country for most of the past few years and so had mostly been out of touch. He was obeying our “no gluten in the apartment” rule, of course, but hadn’t stopped to think through how that meant every bit of food in sight was gluten-free. So when I handed him his share of the freshly buttered breadsticks, then came back five minutes later to ask how they were, he said, “Yeah, they’re good.” I asked him, “So they don’t taste fake? or weird? or anything like that? You wouldn’t think they were gluten-free?” He blinked at me several times, then asked as it sank in, “Wait, these are gluten-free? Really?”
That’s always how I know a recipe is done. 🙂 |
 |
| I don’t know if there’s really a story behind these muffins in particular; the first muffins I made, I was still in the habit of sticking to the exact amounts of the glutinous recipe I was adapting from, and using truly generous amounts of xanthan gum out of some sort of fear that if I didn’t provide enough superglue, the end result would fall apart in my hands, in keeping with its true nature as a desperately fabricated objection to the laws of physics. I was still making imitations of food, not food itself. But anyway . . . |  |
| Nothing fancy about this bread; it’s not trying to be extra-light, or extra-sweet, or extra-yeasty. It’s just basic and delicious. (It reminds some people of bread-machine bread.) I’ll eat it straight up with a little butter, or (my favorite) in a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich. I don’t cook for a lot of people, so more often than not I go through half a loaf or so in the first couple days, use up a little more by making toast, then turn the rest into bread crumbs and chuck it in the chest freezer. Alternatively, you can get good use out of this bread for nearly a week if you take the time to chuck slices in the broiler and toast them really thoroughly! |  |
