Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives

Oatmeal Walnut Bread with Poppy Seeds and the Best Egg Salad You Will Ever Eat!

OK, OK…the best egg salad you will ever eat IF you like medium soft-boiled eggs and Asian hot sauce!

So World Bread Day was two days ago.  Does it count since I put my post up two days late? Of course not, but for those who participated, know I was there with you in spirit while this bread sat in a photo program for a week.  I actually made this bread for this month’s (October) Twelve Loaves theme, seeds and grains, hosted by Lora of Cake Duchess, Jamie of Life’s a Feast and Barbara of Creative Culinary – but there’s a reason for the that little gem ‘Breaking Bread’ – bread…and food in general, is meant to be shared and enjoyed with and by all.

Bread..bread..bread – yeast, yeast, yeast.  I love baking bread..I always did.  The first time I ever worked with yeast was in the second grade.  My elementary school set aside one morning each year to teach all second grade classes how to prepare a breakfast from scratch, including the bread for the toast.  There was an egg station, a bacon station (that would never go over today.  Jamie Oliver would cry), a freshly squeezed orange juice station and a homemade bread station.

You guessed it..I was assigned to the bread station.  My partner in bread was a tough, little kid named Vinny with suspicious blue eyes and lightly tousled blonde hair.  He liked to beat up other kids for fun..and the exhilaration in his eyes when he stomped on insects was a little more than disturbing.  He also liked to throw rocks at anything that moved, including people.  Thankfully, he had terrible aim.

Naturally, I was afraid of him..until he started dipping his fingers in the bubbling cake yeast and smelling them, over and over… his usual dead, scary eyes suddenly sparkling .  He really took to baking bread from scratch and kneaded dough like a pro.  I was in awe.

For the remainder of second grade, the perpetually silent Vinny, in a barely audible, monotone voice, would ask the same question almost every day…

“Are we gonna bake bread today?”

To this day..the smell of foaming cake yeast reminds me of Vinny.   I’m convinced he’s now a bread baker with his own little bakery..or baking for his fellow inmates via kitchen duty.

Initially I was going to make the third yeast bread I ever baked, which was an Onion Lover’s Twist with poppy and sesame seeds from a Pillsbury Bake-Off cookbook that was given to me at the age of 13.  I changed my mind because I wanted a hearty, healthy sandwich bread for a wicked egg salad I’ve made since I was a kid, albeit, without the wicked part.  That came later, when my palate could suddenly tolerate it.

I didn’t bake my second yeast bread or any yeast bread from the book until I was 18..and let’s just say it was a little ambitious for a second yeast bread, especially with no teacher or yeast-loving future bread baker and/or mobster, to help ..choosing a pizza rustica, loaded with meats and cheeses, the yeast dough lining and covering all the filling in a springform pan.  The recipe said it needed to rise in a warm place..so I placed it in front of the super hot radiator on the floor of the den where I was watching TV..staring at it..willing it to rise.

I was making this yeasted pizza rustica to impress Dreamboat.  It had to be perfect.

When I was finally satisfied that it might be starting to rise..I focused my attention on a movie that was on, forgetting about it for the hour it needed.

Well, rise it did..very quickly…over the top of the springform pan, knocking off the plastic wrap….crawling across the floor to the rug like The Blob, The Blob who hadn’t blobbed in days and was starving for a victim to digest into its gelatinous core of evil.

The proper consistency of the yolk for this egg salad is the soft-medium, circled and arrowed in red.  However, I find 6 to 7 minutes gives me that consistency, not 5.5 minutes. Photo courtesy of ieatishotipost.sg since my egg photos had a bluish tint I couldn’t get rid of.

I jumped up to get to it before it hit the rug, but truthfully, I was more concerned about the pizza rustica loaf turning out.  I quickly gathered up the blobs of dough..some of it already dry from a good 20 minutes exposed to the air…seeping down the circumference of the pan and tried to smush it back on top.  I had to do this twice..ripping off so much dough that had hit the floor that there was barely enough dough to sufficiently cover the top.  After another hour, there was little rise..the radiator and my ripping and scrunching the dough down had annihilated it, but I baked it anyway.  Surprisingly, it turned out beautiful.

Not so surprising, Dreamboat almost broke a tooth at first bite.  Beauty is only skin deep. The top crust was as hard as a rock.  We pulled the cheese and meats out, ate those..and that was that.  I’m sure he thought I’d never excel at bread baking.  I kind of felt the same way.

Once I learned, the hard way, that there was no need to let bread rise next to a steaming, hot radiator, I had much success thereafter.

With that said..you all know I’ve been pinning food like a maniac, right?  Naturally, you pin recipes because you want to try them and/or it makes your creative juices bubble like hydrogen peroxide on a brand new boo-boo.  So, I follow Red Star Yeast, and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve repinned their bread, sweet and savory.. and sandwich pins.  When I came across a pin for their Oatmeal Walnut bread..I had to try it.  I couldn’t find their Platinum Yeast anywhere near me, which was a shock..but I did find it miles and miles away at another market when visiting a friend.

The loaf, which contains 1 cup of whole wheat flour, didn’t rise very high over the top of the bread pan, but I expected that since most bread doughs with whole wheat or other whole grain flours are heavy.  BUT, was I in for a surprise..major oven spring!  I guess the platinum yeast is sort of like bread kryptonite!  Oh, did I mention that this bread is delicious and the texture wonderfully dense, but soft with the slight crunch of walnuts and poppy seeds (which I added to the recipe)?  Perfect for a sandwich..like my egg salad…or just ripping off pieces and enjoying as is..since the light molasses flavor is lovely.

Finally, my egg salad.  My mother, who hated cooking and baking, still had a skill or two up her sleeve, like hard boiling eggs.  All of my friends loved her egg salad.  Her secret?  Miracle Whip.  Their mothers used Hellmans, which I preferred once I tasted it.  I never looked back at the whip again.

That said, I prefer my eggs soft or medium soft-boiled aka kind of yolky.  I was never able to find egg salad that way – anywhere..from home to school, to friend’s houses to the markets/deli’s my mother would buy it from occasionally.  The eggs were always hard-boiled..so I took it upon myself to make it the way I liked it.

When I developed a palate that begged for hot and spicy in my late 20’s..I started adding sriracha or chili garlic sauce to my semi-soft boiled egg salad. Both make it even more amazing than it already is.,.IF you like hot and spicy. You can leave out the hot sauce if you like because this egg salad is the best..in my opinion..with or without it.  You can also hard boil your eggs, but that would take away the oozing part of the yolk which becomes part of the dressing – the true twist and secret to its greatness.

Finally..I like my egg salad chunky..chunky to the point where you need lots of napkins because pieces of egg usually fall out as you bite into it, but how small or large you cut your egg up is entirely up to you.  As you can see in the photos..I just about quarter each egg..and as you can also see in the photos, I piled the entire recipe for this egg salad on one sandwich.  Yes..I have prepared it this way for myself many times, but most of the time I put half of it on a sandwich and eat the rest out of the bowl.  My cholesterol was normal the last time I gave blood..well over a year ago.  OK, I’ll stop now.

           Why not add more cholesterol – like BACON?  The lettuce makes it healthy, right?

Recipe for Oatmeal Walnut Bread – I toasted the walnuts and added poppy seeds on top along with the oats.

Semi-Soft Boiled Chunky Sriracha Egg Salad
Makes enough for one monster-sized sandwich or two human-sized sandwiches
4 medium-soft boiled eggs, peeled under cold running water, dried and cut up
2 to 3 tablespoons mayonnaise OR Greek Yogurt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (If I have a head of roasted garlic on hand, I mash in a clove of that instead of the powder)
2 to 3 tablespoons sriracha or chili garlic sauce depending on how much heat you like.  Omit this if you don’t like heat and add another tablespoon of mayonnaise or try BBQ sauce!
1 to 2 scallions, green and white parts, chopped
kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:
1. Place the chopped eggs and chopped scallions in a medium bowl.  In a separate bowl, combine the mayonnaise with the garlic powder and sriracha or chili garlic sauce until uniform.  Mix this dressing with the chopped eg and scallions. Season to taste.

2.  You can eat immediately, but I like to cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the flavors perform magic in the fridge for a few hours.  Serve as sandwiches, on a salad platter, or just eat as is.

I’m also submitting this bread to the BYOB bread baking event hosted by Heather from Girlichef, Michelle from Delectable Musings and Connie from My Discovery of Bread, plus Yeastspotting hosted by Susan of Wild Yeast.