Of All Things Bread and Butter

This morning and I quickly got dressed despite the sun being out.  Think we had a bit of a frost last night.  Decided to try and warm up with some hot tea and hot buttered toast made out of my homemade bread.  It has gone down very nicely and I would say is some of the best toast that I have had in ages.  OH has always insisted on the bought sliced loaf and I have always found toast with this has been missing something.  Homemade bread comes up lovely once toasted and the butter soaks in and then with some of my homemade Lemon marmalade as well, really crunchy, buttery and tasty.  I shall certainly be making bread for me for toast!  It brought back memories of when my Nan used to make bread and toast it on the Rayburn.  Breakfast at my Nan's during the winter months consisted of a bowl of porridge and then a couple of slices of thick buttery toast slathered with my Pop's home produced honey.  Happy days where we were scrunched in the tiny kitchen round a tiny drop leaf table, eating whilst Nan was at the Rayburn and Pop systematically and slowly eating his food. You could never hurry him.  Simpler lovelier days.  I now only have one XL white loaf left.  Will probably make another tomorrow.

Slices up really well though.

For the time being, I have kept them stored under tea towels in the Pantry on a board, but once the Pantry re-arrangement of shelves takes place they should be able to go into their proper bread crocks of which I have several including a Terracotta one.  I also store flour and other ingredients in these proper old fashioned crocks and just turn the crock around if it has a name tag on it and pop a label on with the contents.  It is a good and cheaper way of recycling crocks for modern day use.  Some of them have wooden lids where the original stone lids have been broken and I have a couple of crocks that need to have lids made for them.  My Great Uncle Pat of whom I was extremely fond, used to keep his Hovis wholemeal loaves bought from the bakery in Lincoln in one of these large traditional crocks.  This crock was extremely efficient and it kept his bread cool and fresh in his small larder along with all the fruit he bought every week for his exotic birds. It certainly worked.  I was therefore keen as an adult to reciprocate this practice, which I did for a while back but then stopped using as one of the shelves came loose in the pantry and narrowly missed breaking the crock.

I have yet to make another fruit loaf.  I had hoped to make this afternoon, but it has now been delayed until tomorrow. Fingers crossed and toes plaited for third time lucky.

Being a person who hates waste of any kind, and also bearing in my that I have two loaves of spiced fruitless bread to hand I decided to do a little digging through some of my recipes for using up excess bread.

Quite a while back in the early days of this blog (blog has been going for about 14 years) I popped up a post on "Bread Pudding" [original post here Bread Pudding Recipe]. 

As I have a plethora of dried fruit and also the spiced bread I decided to use both of these items in a couple of "frugal" recipes which I very much think still have their place in modern kitchens.  In my youth, when people referred to "Bread Pudding" I always assumed they meant "Bread and Butter Pudding", not realising that there was a version in the "Bread Pudding" that can be eaten as in a cake or have custard added to it to make a pudding.  On this occasion I have decided to make it as a cake as we always like a bit of something in the tins for eating and snacking on.  A family tradition in case of unexpected guests.  It was always considered "rude" not to be able to offer anything to accompany a cup of tea.

To tell you the truth, I personally like for pudding a proper "Bread and Butter pudding" which is custard based and made from eggs, milk and sugar.  I hated this as a child but absolutely love it now.  Not that there is anything wrong with a Bread Pudding and Custard pudding.  I am also therefore going to make one of these as well.    Both projects for tomorrow morning as I will be in the kitchen then to start with.

Hope everyone has had a good evening and we will see what tomorrow brings.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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