Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A delicious contradiction: quick bread in a slow cooker

I love baking, but sometimes it just seems so wrong to have it be 100 degrees outside, with the air conditioning keeping it in the mid-80s, then cranking up the oven to 400.  And so I've also made friends with my slow cooker.  Along with the energy savings, I love that most recipes involve gathering some ingredients into the pot, leaving them for a few hours, and returning to find a delicious meal.  And the more I use my slow cooker, the more things I find you can make in it.

Case in point: bread!  Bread is one of my aspirational bakes, I eventually want to do some of the 'real' bread baking of yeast activating and rising and punching and all that jazz, but quick breads are a good stepping stone for building my confidence.  This recipe popped up in a few places, and I thought I'd give it a try.  I thought bread would make a good addition to the pot luck table for the Ravellenics cast on party, since it's pretty much a finger food that requires few 'accessories'.  And since this is a garlic parmesan bread, anything you spread on it would just be extra goodness.

This is a very simple recipe that lends itself well to making again with some variations and additions.  From the base of Bisquick, egg, milk, and a little sugar, you could add more than onions and garlic.  How about some rosemary?  Maybe switch it up entirely and add taco seasoning and Jack cheese for taco bread?  I'm clearly making this again.

The only adjustment I made to the original recipe was to double it because my slow cooker is a 6 quart. It turned out great, though I could probably have left it cooking for a few minutes more to get the middle a little more done.  I haven't yet learned the fine art of knowing when bread is ready like I have cookies and cakes.  And then it sure was a fun conundrum figuring out how to get it out of the deep ceramic dish.  But I got it eventually, with just a little breakage.

This was graciously gobbled up by my fellow knitters, and we only took a chunk home with us.

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