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Phew, had un petit crise earlier today when I started to make the onion dill bread – I had purchased cake yeast (that is, it’s pressed into a cake and has to be refrigerated, not that it’s just for making cakes). And when I opened the wrapper, there were three or four different kinds of fungus on it. At the time, I had already started cooking/melting the first few ingredients, so I had to turn everything off and run around for a while hollering “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.” Then I got ahold of David, who was off shooting photos of the snowy forest preserve, and he promised to pick up some more yeast and bring it home ASAP.

Okay, breathe.

There now, all is well. I finished putting the ingredients together with the busily-working yeast, kneaded like a sonovagun, waited til it riz, kneaded again and put the divided halves of dough in the breadpans for the second rise. We leave for T-dinner in 90 minutes, the bread goes in the oven… right about now. Excuse me.

All is well. My loaves are in the oven. Hey now, no wisecracks. So here’s the recipe for one loaf:

1 package dry yeast
1/4 c warm water
1/4 t sugar

1 c. small curd cottage cheese
2 T sugar
1 T instant onion (use 2-3T if using fresh onion)
2 T butter
2 t dill seed
1 t dill weed
1 t salt

1 beaten egg

2 1/2 – 3 c. flour sifted with
1/4 t soda

Start the yeast “working,” using water that is quite warm but not too hot. Over boiling water in a double boiler, combine cottage cheese, sugar, onion, butter, dill seed, dill weed, and salt until butter is melted. Remove upper pan from heat and stir until comfortably warm. Add the yeast mixture, which should be bubbling up. Caution, too much heat at this stage kills the yeast! Add the beaten egg to the cooled mixture. Start adding the flour to the liquid (or if you prefer, make a well in the flour and pour the liquid into it). Stir until the dough starts to come together and pulls away from the side of the bowl or pan. Turn it out onto a floured surface (breadboard is best) and work the flour into the dough and knead until it starts to smooth out and is slightly elastic. Knead by pushing the dough with the heel of your hand (floured) and then fold the elongated dough over itself, give it a quarter turn, then knead it again. Put the dough in a buttered or oiled bowl, cover with a clean kitchen towel, and put it somewhere warm to rise until double in size (about 35-40 minutes).

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Punch down, turn onto board and knead again until smooth. Form a loaf by rolling side to side, pulling the sides of the dough under (if making a double batch, divide the dough in half). Place in a buttered, floured loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 40-50 minutes. Bread is done if it “thunks” hollowly when tapped.

This is the best thing for leftover turkey sandwiches. It’s also really, really good toasted and buttered. And it makes the house smell incredible.

It can be varied – since I didn’t have dried onion, I minced some and caramelized them in about half of the butter while I combined the other liquid ingredients in the double boiler. It occurs to me that I could also carmelize the onions in ALL the butter, but I still have to heat the cottage cheese mixture, so the proportions I used seem about right.

It occurs to me that it might be interesting to use extra-virgin olive oil instead of butter – it would turn out more like Italian herb bread.

The bread has about 20 minutes to go, so now seems like a good time to hop in the shower and get dressed. I’m in my traditional dilly bread-making garb, which consists of a T-shirt and a pair of purple sweat pants, which have flour spattered all down the front. Most years, I have a big floury handprint on my butt, too.

Update: Fixed an error in the recipe; the soda is not added to the liquid ingredients, it’s sifted in with the flour. As for the bread, it came out pretty well – very good consistency, no big airholes, and it was moister, with a more tender crust than I usually get. I think it was the fact that I caramelized fresh onions in half of the butter, which added a touch more moisture. Next time, I would up the proportion of fresh minced onion, and cook them till they were even browner. It also helps to brush the surface of the loaf with milk or egg before putting in the oven.

I still have a lot of bread left because almost all of the cousins are on some form of Atkins. I am pretty tired of being asked to bring bread and then taking three-quarters of it home again, so next year I’ll offer to bring something else. For some reason, there’s never mashed potatoes – again, Atkins. How can they not have mashed potatoes, but two kinds of sweet potatoes? that’s not right.