July 16 2004, 09:10 PM The Luxury of Heat

It is good to live in a climate where air occasionally spills south, ushering in short stretches of cool amber afternoons and dry, quiet nights. It is a delight to walk in such weather, to take in the colors and the whispers of the season without the heavy hang of water in the air. These days seen stolen, lifted from the back of the van in the early morning and tipped quietly into the register of hot, grinding summer that should somehow be our due. I have learned to take opportunities on such days. Today in part I threw open the windows and fired up the oven.

We have too much squash and a distinct lack of muffins; one carelessly standard quick bread recipe (with a bit of nutmeg) has largely solved this. I have now twice tried the trick of using egregious amounts of shredded squash, well near twice what the recipe requires. It may be because the squash is fresh, but: each batch took time and a half again to bake, at least, and each batch in turn was deeply moist regardless, even for lack of butter, even on the next day. I do not know if this trick would work so well on larger sized loaves.

We have been fetching our bread from the bakery down the way, but the oven was on and the stone was hot, so I had planned ahead with a simple dough of water, wheat, yeast and salt. The dough happily massaged its way through three risings, then turned a lovely caramel upon the stone, ending up toasty, wheaty, and everything else that makes bread a wonder. It sits nicely under trimmed slices of Toma tonight; if we can get our hands on some other Paglia cheeses tomorrow, it will sit well and strong under that.