12.9.07

On Publishing One's Failures

I had a bad feeling about it. Granted, the recipe for Sally Lunn bread came from what is currently my very favorite cookbook, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. I have executed quite a few of their recipes now, to great success. Indeed, many of their recipes, particularly the Creamed Corn, have garnered major accolades. But the one recipe that went terribly wrong for me was their Sweet Pie Crust. It was dry, difficult to handle, and stuck to the pie dish in a way I've rarely seen a dough do. The recipe for Sally Lunn was my second foray into the "Bread Basket" section of the book, and I wasn't without misgivings. Besides my unsuccess with the pie dough, the bread recipe seemed too miraculously simple. Sally Lunn is a rich white bread, referred to by the Lee Bros. as the challah of the South. One loaf contains 7 TBSP. of butter and three eggs, as well as 1/3 c. of syrup, be it sorghum, cane or molasses (or golden syrup, as I used). Now, in no way do I purport to be anything close to an authority on bread-baking, but I've done it enough times that a few things seemed odd to me. First off, the dough is not kneaded at all before the first rise, which is supposed to only take 35 minutes. This seemed an awfully short time to me, which I found it truly was when the dough had scarcely risen after resting for the allotted time. It remained the sticky, unkempt mass it was when I covered it with the dishtowel. After it had rested about an hour, not yet having risen to double, I turned it out onto the worktable and had a hell of a time punching it 30 times, when with each slap of my fist I would come away with more dough stuck to me. I scooped it all up into the pan (which certainly doesn't require an entire tablespoon of butter to grease it), let that rise double the allotted 12 minutes, then baked it.

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Well, it wasn't a total disaster. I mean, it's edible, though it would be an exaggeration to call it sliceable. I used it to make the Grilled Pimento Cheese Sandwiches from the Lee Bros. book, and I had to discard about 3 slices that just fell apart. It struck me as rather an odd choice for grilled cheese, being so sweet and dense, but perhaps that's just a matter of taste. And perhaps really Sally Lunn isn't quite like this. I wonder what went wrong between the Lee Bros. and me...

The pimento cheese, I must mention, was really delicious and made a superlative grilled cheese filling, despite whatever unsavory memories the word conjures up for me of the foul pimento-studded baloney I was served as a child at school. This was something entirely different and delicious. And I couldn't resist sprinkling a little smoked hot paprika on each sandwich. I don't know if Southerners would approve, but it was certainly good. I would recommend something pickled on the side, as well.

You may ask why on earth I chose to follow as recipe I was fairly certain wouldn't work. Fact is, I like to always give the recipe the benefit of the doubt the first time around, lest it disclose to me some secret shortcut or alternate route I never would have discovered otherwise. Alas, this is not often the case. Next time, lacking an adventurous side and undesirous of danger, I think I will stick to Greg Patent's Buttermilk Loaf, which I made last year (revealing, perhaps, with what shameful infrequence I address the task of making bread).

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More on Greg Patent, one of my favorite American bakers, later on...

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