I made bread dough the other day with full intentions of baking a
baguette. I used the standby classic recipe for white bread from my "Joy
of Cooking" cookbook. No fancy ingredients, just white flour, yeast with
warm water and I use soymilk rather than regular. I combined the
ingredients and let it rise with as much patience as I could muster.
Then I punched it down and let it rise again in loaves. Then I realized
is was a steamy 90-something degree day outside and my little one air
conditioner unit wasn't ready to battled the heat outside and the gas
oven inside. This oven heats up my apartment so much I could skip the
radiators in the winter and rely souly on this oven while baking, which
I partially did a few months ago and cranked out all kinds of delicious
baked goods, which I shared with coworkers and friends.
So rather than turn on the oven and heat up the house, I stashed the
dough in the fridge and made a carb-free dinner and decided it was all
for the better anyway. This weekend I fired up the grill to sizzle some
steaks and eggplant and thought, why not? I got the raw dough out of the
fridge, which at this point was a wad of sticky white stuff in a big
zipper bag. I made a pattie out of it, sprayed it with veggie oil and
gently laid it on the grill. It came out great! It was gorgeous bread
with brown grill marks on it and it tasted wonderful with smoky flavors
and the yeasty homemade bread flavor. Definitely try grilling your bread
this summer instead of baking it, and spare yourself the trouble of
heating up the oven. I sipped a glass of wine and enjoyed the garden
while my cat poked around in the garden and my neighbors even came out
for a chat. It was a great way to enjoy summer's long nights while
trying a new way to cook an old favorite. Now I wonder what other breads
I can grill, or how it would work to put trays on the grill and use it
as a source of heat to bake muffins or other savory breads.
