Wild-Fermented All-Buckwheat Bread

This recipe is perfectly elegant in the way I like best: few ingredients, magical transformations. Whole buckwheat groats, salt, and water ferment with ambient organisms to become a toothsome, nutty, wholly bready bread. 

Well over two years ago, Sandor Katz tweeted a link to this recipe by Conscious Catering. As far as I can tell, the Conscious Catering folks were the first to take the wild fermentation method used in making dosas and idli, and adapt it to buckwheat in a loaf shape. I've been baking it nonstop ever since, and it's gotten a bit famous among fermentation enthusiasts and wheat-avoiders.

I have used non-sourdough wild-leavened bread recipes in the past, and found them to give me inconsistent results. They often amount to creating a new sourdough starter at the same time as making the bread, which is a bit of a gamble, and can leave you with barely-leavened bricks for bread. Usually, I'd much rather have enough time to build up a powerful starter before trying to make bread out of it. So I would have foolishly ignored this recipe, except for knowing that dosas and idli do work.

The crucial part of the dosa method is that you soak whole grains, rather than starting with a flour-based dough. I've found that wild-fermented dough made of ground-up soaked whole grains is much more bubbly and active than a flour-based dough of the exact same age. The grains begin to sprout during the long soak, which unlocks the stored starches and makes them into more yeast-friendly sugars.

I did find that the recipe needed some adjustment, particularly during the colder months. Merely extended the dough's fermentation time (as the original recipe suggests) can give you some very fishy-smelling dough. Rather, I extend the soaking phase substantially.

Buckwheat Bread

Soak five cups of whole, raw buckwheat groats in a large bowl of spring or filtered water for 8-12 hours. Rinse and drain the buckwheat groats (the water becomes quite thick).

Add 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 cups of water. Puree with an immersion blender until a smooth batter forms. You can also mash them (minus the water) in a large mortar and pestle. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and let the batter ferment until it's bubbly and swollen--it may reach 1.25-1.5 times its starting volume, but after that it won't improve. In the summer, this takes another 12 hours or so, but in the winter, it may be more than 24 hours. If it doesn't look risen at all, give it a stir every 12 hours to keep the surface from getting funky.

Very gently, give the finished batter a brief stirring. It will have some larger, loose bubbles, as well as very fine bubbles like beaten egg white. Scoop the batter into two well-buttered bread pans and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes (no need to rise in the pan). Turn the oven down and bake for 45 minutes more at 350. Let cool for 10 minutes or so before gently removing from pans. Cool on a rack, covered with a tea towel.

This bread is at its most convincing when fresh from the oven. It doesn't age very well. I keep one loaf out at room temperature, covered with a tea towel, and it doesn't dry out to too much in the few days it takes me to finish it. The second loaf I store in a plastic bag in the fridge and only eat toasted. Once it's stored in plastic, the crust softens in an unappealing way and is prone to mold growth.

Sourdough Millet Oat Flatbread

My Aunt Linda developed this wheat-free recipe for flatbread, because weird diets are genetic. If you use a gluten-free starter and gluten-free oat flour they will also be completely gluten free, if that's what you're after. I adapted her original recipe for sourdough fermentation and found that using oat flour let me cut out the xanthan gum that most wheat-free breads require. Oats are plenty gummy all by themselves.

In the absence of wheat, cooked millet provides the structure and chewiness of these flatbreads. The long sourdough fermentation gives them the sweet-savory addictive quality usually missing from "substitute" breads. I make them constantly.

Actually, they're so sweet-savory, I wonder if some koji organisms floated out of my miso crock and found their way into my sourdough starter. The starter has taken on a fabulous umami character and seems really good at breaking down carbohydrates, so that any dough it ferments quickly becomes sweeter and softer.

Make sure your starter is quite active before you begin--feed it 8 hours or so before starting. You can make your own wild sourdough starter (use teff or brown rice flour if you want it gluten free) or order one from Cultures for Health. The millet and potato flours can be switched out for other things, like teff or tapioca flour. I wouldn't add much more oat flour, or the flatbreads will be hard and dry. Same for rice flour.

Sourdough Millet Oat Flatbread

Makes 18 4-5" flatbreads

In a large bowl, combine:

4 cups cooked millet, cooled somewhat*
2 cups oat flour
1 cup millet flour
1 cup potato flour

Stir to evenly distribute the cooked millet & break up any lumps. Then add:

1/2 cup active sourdough starter
1.5 cups water

Knead briefly to mix everything evenly, then cover with a tea towel and place somewhere warm to ferment.

Let the dough ferment for a few hours, depending on the temperature. My kitchen has been in the 90s lately, so a few hours are plenty, but each rising can take 8 hours or more when it's down in the low 60s in the winter. The dough will not really rise, either--that's a lot to ask of a bread without gluten. Instead, it will puff slightly, develop cracks in the surface, and become fragrant with sourdough as the starter reproduces. The dough will also soften considerably as it absorbs moisture from the cooked millet, and you'll need to stir it rather than knead it. Let it rise again for a similar amount of time.

When it has puffed and cracked a second time, whisk together:

3 tablespoons of honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1.5 teaspoons of sea salt

Pour over the dough and stir until well combined. With the honey and olive oil, the dough will be quite wet now.

Line two large baking trays with parchment and pour 1/4 cup olive oil in a little bowl. Scoop large spoonfuls of batter onto the trays, about 9 per full-size sheet tray. Oil your hand well and pat the spoonfuls down into smooth 5" circles. Dip a little more oil onto your hand before patting each flatbread. They should be quite oily on top, so pat on a little extra if you have any oil leftover at the end. Let the flatbreads "rise" again until a bit puffier, another hour or two.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then switch the baking sheets and bake for another 10 minutes. They should be golden all over and a bit brown at the edges. Use convection if you have it, or run each tray under the broiler for a minute at the end to get some extra color on them. Let cool on a rack.

After the first day or two they'll definitely need to be toasted to be delicious. They freeze well and can be toasted from the freezer.

Seeded flatbread: Add 1/2 cup each chopped walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and 2 tablespoons sesame seeds to the dough with the honey and olive oil after the first two risings.

Note: Over the course of a long fermentation, the enzymes in honey can have unpredictable effects on bread dough. Saving the oil for the end makes the honey easier to mix in. The honey is delicious, of course, encourages browning, gives the yeast a little boost for that final rise, and helps the flatbread retain moisture, but you could certainly omit it and add the oil and salt when first mixing up the dough.

*Rinse & drain 1 part millet and add 2 parts water, bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer for 20 minutes until the liquid is absorbed.

Doughnut Bread Pudding

You're right. Nobody ever has too many homemade doughnuts just sitting around waiting to be made into doughnut bread pudding. Nor would I ever dream of recommending that anyone make doughnuts just for turning into bread pudding. But should the unthinkable occur, consider that doughnut bread pudding is nothing other than a good rich dough, fried in lard, glazed, and baked in a custard; i.e., sublime.

For my cookbook release party on Thursday, Mama and I made eighty-odd doughnuts according to the directions for overnight-risen potato doughnuts in the book.

Half we glazed with the standard glaze, and half with the maple glaze (this time I browned the butter in the maple glaze recipe, a charming variation).

We only brought a dozen back home, and those quickly dwindled to half a dozen. But after a day or two, the unthinkable happened: the doughnuts ceased to be perfect. And a doughnut that is anything less than perfect really has no reason to exist. So I made bread pudding.

Doughnut Bread Pudding

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice six or seven stale homemade doughnuts in half like bagels and place them on a rack. Put them in the oven until they're lightly toasted, flipping them if need be.

Meanwhile, beat 5-6 eggs in a large bowl. Add a teaspoon of vanilla, half a teaspoon of salt, a grating of nutmeg, a few tablespoons of maple syrup (inversely proportional to the amount of glaze on the doughnuts), and a quart of rich milk. Beat well.

Pull the toasted doughnuts from the oven and let them cool. Butter a 9 x 13" baking dish. Find a slightly larger roasting pan to use as a water bath, and bring a kettleful of water to a boil.

Arrange the doughnut halves in the buttered baking dish and pour the egg mixture overtop. Let the doughnuts soak in the custard for 15 minutes or so, turning them to sop it up on all sides. When they are nicely soggy, cover the dish with tinfoil and place it in the larger roasting pan in the oven. Pour hot water in the roasting pan about an inch deep. Bake 45-50 minutes, until the custard is mostly set, but still a bit runny in the middle. Let cool for half an hour and serve warm or refrigerate.

Slow Bread

Lately, I've been making Slow Bread. It's the bread I make when I've neglected my sourdough starter, but I want the deep flavor and chewy texture of a long, slow fermentation. The idea is simple: long, cold rising encourages flavorful lacto-fermentation, instead of astringent yeasty-flavored alcoholic fermentation. I positively detest the flavor of over-yeasted bread.

Slow Bread is also very convenient for the work week. I can mix it up before bed, knead it down just before I leave for work the next morning, and shape it into loaves when I get home. You can even let it go for a third rising in the bowl before shaping it -- so long as the weather's not too hot.

About that weather. I've been wearing wool for a week and my hands are growing bony with the cold. The cats have cabin fever and quarrel over my lap. It's deathly still for a moment and we are so stuck, so trapped, so entombed in this wretched fog. It's only June, but my heart quails at the thought of another horrid mummified summer on this godforsaken peninsula.

I suppose it's clear that my distaste for this weather is not unmixed with a certain macabre fascination. I like to take long walks among the shrouded eucalyptus trees, and I'm grateful when I don't have to see all the sunny-day people. But a macabre fascination in no way makes up for missing out on summer. And the summers I miss are not even golden breezy affairs, but sickly hot things spent working in the orchard with gnats up my nose and peach fuzz adhering to my sweat.

Well, if you have that sort of summer, you should let this bread rise in the springhouse or down in your basement.

Slow Bread

The night before baking, put 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. yeast (depending on how cold it is) in a quarter-cup of lukewarm water. Stir 2 T. salt into another half-cup of water.

Put twelve cups flour in a bowl. For all my bread these days, I use coarse, freshly ground spelt flour.

When the yeast is dissolved, add it and the salt to the flour. Add a couple of cups of water, and stir well. Keep adding water -- a bit at a time -- until all the flour is moistened. I would give you better measurements, but the amount of water you need will vary widely depending on your weather and the flour you've got. It should be soft but still bouncy. Knead the dough well, form it into a smooth ball, and place it in a large oiled bowl to rise in a cool place. Cover it with tea towels.

In the morning, it should be risen and bubbly. Knead it gently back into a taut ball, and leave it to rise again, still in a cool place. When it has risen high and its top has started to look not taut, but puckered, you can either knead it down and let it rise once more in the bowl, or shape it into loaves.

To shape the loaves, cut the dough in two. Shape each half into a taut ball, and let it rest in the bowl or a floured tabletop for ten minutes or so, to the give the gluten a chance to relax again. Oil a large baking sheet or two loaf pans. Take each ball of dough and tuck two opposite sides down and under, keeping the top of the loaf smooth and taut while letting it elongate. Place the shaped loaves in your pans or on the baking sheet and let them rise again.

When they are not quite doubled in volume (not height), still taut and springy, preheat the oven to 450. Place the loaves in the oven and turn it down to 350. Bake until they are well browned and hollow-sounding when tapped on the bottom, about one hour.

English Muffins

A friend came over to make English muffins with me. It was such a rainy day.

We started with a simple goal: whole-grain holes. So we ground spelt berries until we were warm and had 6 cups of flour. Then we mixed in 2.5 teaspoons of salt. We put 2 teaspoons of yeast in half a cup of warm water, and let it dissolve. Then we put the yeast in the flour along with 1.5 cups cold water. We beat the mixture vigorously with a large wooden spoon for five, ten minutes, until it looked less like batter and more like dough. The coarse, freshly ground spelt flour is slow to absorb moisture, and that means it acts wetter than it will later on.

Then we squeezed the dough with our hands -- the dough still being too wet for the usual fold 'n' push kind of kneading. And when it began to form long lanky strands of gluten, we cleaned our hands, wet them, and added yet more water. The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book suggests a texture near to "runny," and we didn't stint with the water, not at all. I think we added another cup, gradually working it in until the dough was slippery, quivery, tender, and tendoned with gluten.

We let it rise, then, and ate a pleasant lunch and read our books. The rising process for a very wet dough is not quite like the usual one where your ball gets larger and larger. Rather, the rising process is one of intense bubbling. The mass rose, yes -- after maybe two hours or so it doubled. Then we stirred it back down -- usually an unremarkable process. The dough, however, did not fall back quickly, but took several minutes of stirring before reluctantly settling back down to its original size. Its bubbles were strong and well distributed.

It rose again, this time more quickly, and again we stirred it down. Then we generously floured two large rimless baking sheets. We cut egg-sized lumps from the dough, shaped them into floppy rounds, and placed them on the baking sheets. They were too wet to cover -- a cloth, unless well-floured, would have stuck. We had fifteen rounds when we were done.

We left them to rise and found a long enough gap in the rain for a nice walk up the dark drippy stairs on Potrero Hill.

By the time we got back, the rounds had spread out and puffed a bit. We warmed two large cast-iron skillets over a medium-low flame. Breath held, we lifted the first little muffin from the tray. It was a two-person job, sliding under the muffin from two sides and gingerly dropping it in the pan. You could do it by yourself if you had to.

We let it cook for five minutes on one side. We flipped it -- fingers work well for that. Bubbles formed. It puffed. Five minutes later, we flipped it again, and a few minutes after that, its sides were springy and we pulled it from the pan.

We split it immediately and discovered a beautiful array of holes, which we filled with butter and devoured. We were perhaps a little giddy with our success.

Our next goal is shapeliness. Rings might help the muffins be tall and circular. And then maybe we could altogether forego the shaping, let the dough have a third rising in the bowl, and just pinch off muffin-sized pieces as we fry them. This dough, after all, does not deflate very readily. And the shape of the rising rounds didn't seem to have much effect on the muffins' final shape.

Sponge Bread

Breads made from a sponge that ferments overnight are halfway between quick yeast breads and sourdoughs, in all the right ways. They're savory, moist, and shockingly convenient.

Even wholegrain sponge breads rise lightly and spring wildly. Their chewiness is breathtaking. Their crumb is coarse. Every slice is composed of smooth, shiny holes, separated by panes of translucent bread. In fact, I just recently discovered a trick for making sponge bread even holier. Now it's so holy and chewy it's almost like a sliceable, sandwich-friendly English muffin.

If you're used to making standard yeast bread, you may be shocked at the tiny proportion of yeast to flour in sponge bread (here, a quarter teaspoon to 18 cups of flour). It's fine; as the sponge ferments overnight, the yeast multiplies exponentially. If you put in too much yeast, it becomes too densely populated during the overnight rise, and starts to produce a nostril-stinging alcoholic aroma. This aroma -- in a subtler form -- becomes the flavor of the finished bread.

The night before baking, dissolve 1/4 teaspoon yeast in 1/4 cup warm water. Dissolve 1 tablespoon sea salt in 2.5 cups cold water. Put 6 cups whole flour (I like spelt) in a medium bowl and add the yeast and salt water. Stir/knead it vigorously for several minutes, then cover it with a cloth and let it ferment for about twelve hours in a moderately warm room -- or longer in a cold room.

The next morning, the sponge will have risen up and collapsed on itself, looking spongey. Dissolve 2 tablespoons salt in 3.5 cups warm water. Add two tablespoons honey and 1/4 cup olive oil. Pour this over the sponge and mix it together with your fingers. Here's the holiness trick: knead the sponge while it's submerged in the warm water. As the starches in the sponge dissolve into the water, you'll be left with firm, springy wads of gluten in your hands. Don't let it go too far, or the gluten will be too firm to mix into the dough later on. It doesn't matter if it doesn't mix in smoothly.

I'm not sure why this works -- it's not like I've added extra gluten. Perhaps the underwater kneading makes it easier for the gluten to align itself into long fibers. It definitely becomes very ropy.

Put twelve cups wholegrain spelt flour in a very large bowl or pot, and add the sponge/water mixture. Stir it until it's combined, and see whether its moisture level is right. This will vary tremendously depending on the flour you use. For holiness and chew, I like this dough to be almost too wet to handle. Don't be shy about adding water if you need to -- or extra flour if the dough becomes an intractable batter. Knead it, or stir it vigorously for five or ten minutes, until it feels quite springy in spite of its softness.

Cover it and let it rise in a warm spot for about two hours, until it's doubled and full of spongey bubbles. Push it down, knead it a few turns, and let it rise again -- this time for about an hour.

When it's risen for the second time, collapse the dough again and divide it in thirds (four if your bread pans are on the smaller side). Form each piece into an elongated round, tucking the sides to form a taut, smooth surface -- which may not hold if the dough's quite wet. Place the shaped loaves in the buttered bread pans and let rise again.

When the loaves have risen well, but not too much -- nearly doubled in volume -- place them in a 425-degree oven for twenty minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 and bake until done (35-40 minutes more for medium loaves, an hour for huge ones).

Q & A with Paprikahead: Peas and Grapes

Hey Paprikahead,

It's me, the fluffy hamster, wondering about some weird stuff. Really, really weird stuff.

Like Number 1: How come peas seem to be frozen or in cans? What would peas look like in a market? Where are they? They would fit so well in my pouches, making my cheeks soft to the squeeze yet textured to the rub.

OK, Number 2: Can I really use fresh grapes in my bread? I sure hope so. I have so few raisins and rumor is that raisins are really just dried out grapes. Maybe this is true? Oh Jeez. Better get rid of those seeds.

All right Paprikahead. These are just some small queries. I'm going to get back to nest building here in Portland and chasing the cat around.

I'm making a nice stock, by the way, and a soup shall follow. Directions courtesy of paprikahead.com, of course.

Your faithful small woodland creature of the night,

Fluffy Hamster

Dear Fluffy Hamster,

I'm afraid I have sad news for you today.

1. Peas, it turns out, are one of the sweetest signs of springtime. In farmers' markets, you can find them inside their crisp green pods. You shell them with a little push to pop their seams and a zipper-like action with your thumb. The little peas roll out, so cute, so sweet. For the shelling, I recommend child labor. Tell them it's a contest to see who can find the pod with the most peas in it. That's how I learned. They don't keep very well once shelled, so that's why you really only see them frozen. See if you can wait till next spring, Hamster.

2. I would not recommend making bread with grapes in it. First, the seeds would be a bit of a pain. Second, grapes are very moist -- much moister than bread dough -- and they would turn your dough to mush. It is true, though, that grapes turn into raisins. You could, if you were patient, pick the seeds out of your grapes and spread them out on a rack set in a black cookie sheet and dry them for several days in the sun, bringing them in before dusk each night so they wouldn't catch a drop of dew. Or, if you're in rainy Portland, you could put them in a very cool oven -- no more than 150, or they'll get crisp instead of chewy, and dry them that way for several days.

Something altogether different, having to do with grapes and bread, is the delightful fact that the dusty bloom on grape skins is actually wild yeast. You can jumpstart a wild yeast sourdough starter by putting a handful of grape skins in it. My coauthor, Ken Albala, has some good examples on his site, but sadly, the wild yeast sourdough recipe is part of our cookbook(!) so it's not on the web anymore.

Happy nest buildling, Hamster!

Paprikahead

My Sourdough Turned White!

I've been happily tending to my new starter for some weeks now. I notice with pride its every milestone, watching misty-eyed as it develops character, strength, and smooth digestion.

This morning, like many mornings, I rose early and got a batch of bread going. The starter was chafing at the bit and the dough rose steadily. When I put it in the oven, it gave a yare spring and wafted up a fragrance savory enough I could hear the upstairs neighbors' stomachs growling. And then I noticed the crust was blanching. Like this:

Does anyone know why? The crust is thin but crisp, the crumb moist, a little bubbled, and tender. Perhaps I should start it in a hot, steamy oven to ensure perfect browning. Perhaps I should clean my room, which has evidence of a hundred ongoing projects:

Can you find (1) the bread, (2) the bicycle chain ready to be covered with waxed canvas & leather for a homespun anti-thievery saddle-leash, (3) W. Crawford's briefcase, tin cloth pants, and pinstripes, (4) Dogfish Head's chicory stout, (5) the flaky-ass router, (6) the milk crate holding my mending queue, (7) two of three bicycles, and (8) the recently-pruned Mystery Mint, plus the recently-repotted jade, dieffenbachia, and rapidly-rapunzelling ivy. All of which need constant, unwavering attention. And that's just one corner of my room.* No wonder my bread turned white -- my hairs aren't far behind.

I will not give you my bread recipe until it stops turning white. Instead, I will go cut another thick, warm slice and slather it with butter, which will melt, pool, and slowly saturate its velvety, spongy crumb.

*Actually the picture shows four of the twelve corners in my room.

Beer Bread

Dear Fressen Artisan Bakery,
I wanted to check out the rhubarb scene at the farmer's market down by People's Food Co-op, and I thought it a good excuse to take my new broomstick of a bike for a spin. I found forests of rhubarb, and bought a couple pounds of the crimson stalks. Then I saw your bread, and it looked like Europe, and so I asked about it. You told me all about the long-fermented sourdoughs, the dense volkornbrot and some rolls I'd be tempted to call zsemle, and you even gave me a sample of that enormous beer bread loaf behind the glass. I said I'd like to buy it, only to discover I had squandered almost all my funds on rhubarb. Even combing out all my change, I still came up $2.50 short. But you gave me the loaf anyway, and it filled up first my backpack and then my tummy. It was exactly perfect: sour and light, with a crackly thin crust and a moist, tender interior. Thanks ever so much.

Love,
Paprikahead

The Oldest-fashioned Bread

I put a bunch of enzymes to work three days ago. They've been slaving away for me in my kitchen, spinning starch into sugar and unlocking secret stores of nutrients.

I first made sprouted wheat bread last fall, when I needed something besides cranberries to sustain H. Rose and me on a cranberry-picking backpacking trip. Its dense texture -- caramelized crust and moist interior -- utterly enchanted us, especially paired with the oily melting sharp cheddar we'd packed along.

The process is simple. Soak hard wheat berries (red wheat really shines, but white works, too) one morning in plenty of filtered water. At nightfall, drain them, and depending on the temperature of your kitchen, they might have little sprouts the next morning or evening, or even later. The white sprout should be about 1/3 the length of the grain, but don't be fooled by the skinny little rootlets which are longer and wigglier than the true sprout. If the berries sprout too much, the enzymes will eat all the starch and turn it into sugar -- and good luck making bread from pure sugar. If they don't sprout enough, the bread will not be magic.

Once they are perfect, put them through a meat grinder with some dates -- about half a cup per pint of sprouts. You'll have to grind the whole mess several times over, and the more consistent the texture, the better your bread shall be. Unfortunately, I left my old meat grinder in Virginia, and the one I found here is not nearly as thorough.

Knead the sticky mess, and let it sit for a while. Of course it isn't going to rise, but because it's so full of magic germinating energy, and might catch some wild yeasts from the air, that I do let it rest. Anyhow. gluten always likes to take beauty rests to stay strong & elastic.

I shape the dough into little oblong loaves, maybe two inches tall and the size of my hand with my thumb tucked under, and let the loaves sit a bit before slashing them thrice with a sharp knife and putting them in a slow oven for a couple of hours. When your whole house smells like honey and hay. and the loaves are crusty and deeply colored, you may pull them from the oven. They soften up if you wrap them and store them somewhere cool for several days, but I don't know anybody who can resist fresh bread.

H. Rose adds that she likes her loaves crusty, and once when her oven was too hot, they were really hard, and really good.

Dollarbags

A hippie grocery store three blocks from my house has this policy of putting extra-ripe produce in large bags, which sell for a dollar. Yesterday it was bananas. I made another loaf of banana-rescue bread (this time with two absolutely oozy bananas and only one egg, and raisins because I was bored). I just so happened to be making peanut butter truffles this morning and, as usual, found myself with some leftover tempered chocolate. I broke bananas in marshmallow-sized pieces and dipped them. The result has the same textural appeal of a chocolate covered marshmallow -- what with the chocolate shell collapsing inward on the soft, slightly springy interior when you bite down -- minus all the "I'm a disgusting bit of extruded sugar, gelatin, and preservatives" nonsense that marshmallows are in the habit of yelling at you.

Banana Bread

Yeast makes little volcanoes in my tummy. So I suppress my ancestral baking instincts and do the quick-leavened ones, which aren't as satisfying as organism-risen breads, but have a couple other advantages, like efficiency and muffin-ness. I did throw together a nice little banana bread the other day, when I realized my housemates really weren't going to eat the blackened fruit -- and I am proud to report that after three days, the reincarnated banana/bread has resisted the slow, dry death of most quick breads. Creamed a chunk (half a fist) of coconut oil with a similar volume each of agave nectar and ground flax. In another bowl, I mashed the rescued banana and blended it with 3 eggs and a generous splash of vanilla. I dumped the two bowls together and used the empty one to mix a fist or two of spelt flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, and a lot of salt, which then got tossed into the liquids and stirred together with a few swift strokes and half a fist of chopped walnuts. And honestly, when you've got that much flax meal and whole-grainy stuff in your quick breads or muffins, you can ignore the conventional caveats against overmixing. Not that they require lots of mixing, but you needn't pee your pretty panties if you lose count of your strokes. One greased loaf pan and a 350-degree oven till it's done. Which is about the time it takes to pack a lunch and have half a good phone call, during which your friend mentions the word "oven" and you yell like a banshee and race for the kitchen to find your banana-rescue bread is perfectly done. Eat a slice right then; your friend won't hear you slobbermunching if you're careful.