Supper In a Bread Loaf

Supper in a Bread Loaf

There are days where making supper is just hard.  I am crap at following recipes (before this).  I am a reforming bad meal planner and never seemed to have the right combination of ingredients in the house to make the meal that I really wanted.  I’d have to scour cookbooks and the internet in order to find something that I was in the mood for using the ingredients I had on hand.

If you don’t already realize it, this is a very bad, time consuming way to go about meal prepping and planning.

It can result in creative and tasty dishes, but ends up being very frustrating.  Take out seems much easier than going through that stress every night.  It also doesn’t help when you ask the family what they want to eat and either no one has an idea or everyone has different ideas.  Making these decisions after a long day of making other far more important decisions is hard.  It’s a lot of pressure.  Making the decision to go through these recipes and make them all has taken a lot of pressure off.  I still don’t always have the right ingredients, but meal planning is significantly easier.  DSCN2433Enter Supper in a Bread Loaf.

This recipe is the poor man’s version of Beef Wellington.  It is because of this recipe that I had frozen bread dough in the house for the French Apple Coffee Cake.

Had my house already been clean, my children all in school, etc, I might have taken extra bread dough  to make beautiful decorations on the roll.  I might’ve egg washed it, made gorgeous cuts to make this into a work of art.  Instead, I just did the most basic version of this dish.

Well, sort of.

The directions say “season to taste”. For those of you that know me well, you know that my brain automatically shot in infinite directions.  “Oh, this could be good seasoned with taco seasoning.”  “Ooooohh, what about using my Krakow Nights seasoning?”  “I have some fresh herbs in the garden, but I think those might be the wrong choice.”  I settled on adding a bunch of Fox Point Seasoning.  I thought it would add flavor, but keep it true to the original intention of the dish.  It worked! The kids inhaled the meal.

My husband took leftovers to work.  His co-workers asked about it.  He said it was good reheated.  DSCN2439In order for busy people to make this dish in time for supper, there is some pre-planning that needs to happen.

Put the bread dough from the freezer into the fridge the night before you want to make this dish.  It will start the thawing process.  In the morning, move the bread dough into a container on the counter.  Cover it with plastic wrap. (Speaking of plastic wrap, my husband told me that environmental concerns means plastic wrap no longer has the coating on it that allows it to stick to anything. It now only sticks to itself.) Leave this on your counter until it’s time to actually make supper.

For this purpose, a lengthy rising time is not going to affect your end product.  It may even allow some of the bread dough flavors to develop a little more.

If you cook extra ground beef, throw it in your freezer for something else.  It’s much easier to do dinner in a hurry when at least part of it is already cooked. DSCN2443Substitute chicken, turkey, pork, or whatever for the meat.  For a vegetarian version, use mushrooms, cooked lentils, or eggplant as your filling, add some sauteed greens.

This is one of those unapologetic dishes that is basic and filling.  It’s open to all sorts of interpretation.  Open up your fridge, your pantry, and your spice cabinet, get creative.  If you have a great version of this dish, please feel free to let me know about it.

The Recipe:Supper In a Bread Loaf

If you like this recipe, check out 7 Make Ahead Dinners For Busy Moms and Other Important People and Freezer Meal: Tuna Burger Casserole

Pinnable Image Supper in a Bread Loaf

Kringla

Kringla Recipe

Kringla. When you say that word to anyone that has known my family for a while, you can practically see them salivate.  “I love kringla.” They will always say.  The boys were just having a conversation about how much they loved kringla.  “You just need to say one word when describing kringla.  Yummy!” Nick told me.

For a long time I refused to learn to make kringla because it was something my grandma always made us.  When I called her to tell her that I was going to visit, she’d say “I guess I need to get some sour milk.”  I didn’t learn to make it until my grandma moved into assisted living. And still, I don’t want other people to make it for me.  I don’t really want to hear about it if someone other than family makes it.  I definitely don’t want to hear if someone changes the recipe.  This recipe is being shared, but reluctantly.  Maybe someday I’ll be ok hearing about what other people do with kringla, but not yet. DSCN2479

A kringla, the way we grew up with them, is a knot of dough that tastes sort of like a sugar cookie and has a crumb kind of between a biscuit and a pancake.  Dry like a biscuit, but softer and less flaky, like a pancake.  It’s easy, it’s simple.  It’s like a hug.

I had a boyfriend in college who told me his grandma made kringla.  One day, he brought me something in a baggie.  It was a knotted pastry, but it was more like a croissant.  It was good. But, it was not kringla.

I don’t remember ever having it fresh from the oven until I started making it myself.  I remember having it handed over to us in a plastic bag that had been rewashed a few times.  The kringla was always pale and dusted with flour.  Biting into it there was always that first dryness of the flour, the softness of that hitting the tongue.  Then there is this sweetness.  It’s vanilla and sugar, but unassuming.  Everything about it is just sort of soft and gentle.  It sort of hits you with subtlety.

I have introduced many, many people to my grandma’s kringla.  They grab the first one from the bag because they are hungry and because they can’t quite believe that I am THAT excited about something that is so modest.  Just a pale gold knot of dough.  It looks bland and boring.  It looks beige.  It’s not something that will ever challenge the taste buds.  And then they taste it.  They might start the way I do, breaking off the end of the knot and then eating it from one end of the knot to the other.  Savages bite it down the middle.  As they finish, their hand reaches into the bag for another.  They can’t help it.

The next time I mention to them that my grandma is coming to visit they ask if she is bringing kringla.  She didn’t always.  Sometimes it was her chocolate chip cookies, but that’s another story.DSCN2481

Going through the recipes I inherited, I found a copy handwritten by my great-grandma Funk.  I mentioned it to my mom.  “Grandma Funk never made Kringla, that was a recipe your grandma got from Pearl Simpson.”  “I’m pretty sure this is great-grandma’s handwriting.”  “Oh, well then, she must’ve gotten the recipe from your grandma.” She conceded.

I found the cookbook in which Pearl Simpson had published her kringla recipe.  One of those church cookbooks from Iowa where all the women are identified as Mrs. Husband’s Name and then gives the name of the town they lived in.  It’s exactly the sort of cookbook you’d expect from Iowa in the 1950’s, a place where my parents assure me “ketchup was considered spicy.”   DSCN2483

I started texting my siblings and posting on FB whenever I visited with Grandma and got two dozen kringla to eat at a later point, later like in the car on the way home.  I liked to rub it in their faces.  It was mean.  I knew it.  I intend to make it up to them someday.  But for now…I have kringla and I bet you don’t.

The Recipe:

Kringla

For more of my favorite recipes check out Breakfast Pops, Apple butter Cake, and Darned Good Candy.

My grandma's kringla is a family favorite