TWD: Oatmeal Breakfast Bread

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I just cannot seem to get away from baking with fruit this month.  After baking chocolate all weekend long, I’m back into fruit land once more, compliments of Natalie from Oven Love who gave us the Oatmeal Breakfast Bread as our Tuesday with Dorie week’s choice.

Oatmeal is not fruit, you may say… well yeah, but don’t let the name fool you.  It has oats and a combination of spices and any dried fruit of your choice. And technically, I’m on the fence if calling it “Bread” would be appropriate, since it did not involve using yeast or kneading or even a rolling pin!

But at the end it did not matter, Tom was once more in high heaven, because not only did it have fruit, but OATS!

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Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffee Cake

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As most food blogger out there, we collect recipes from all over.  We print them out, we bookmark them, we tear them out of food magazines, we earmark them with post it on cookbooks and soon, before you know it, we have a cooking TO DO list.

Mine is pretty long, and pretty overdue.

I had this recipe in my list for quite a while now.  I found it via Leite’s Culinaria website a couple of months back and printed it and saved it for that moment in time where I would totally have the nerve to tackle it.

Anyhow…

At first the recipe scared me; it had yeast and needs kneading, and the use of a rolling pin!   Three things that I’m not good at using or doing.  I made bread before – it was a traumatic experience and decided to stick to things that I’m good at, like cake and complicated savory dishes. Anything that has yeast in it has a life on its own and I’m a control freak so that is not a good combination - I know how to choose my battles, and bread is a higher power – so I stay away.

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TWD: Raisin Swirl Bread

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I'm afraid of bread making or specifically anything that uses yeast.

There I came clean.  Yep, using yeast scares me, maybe because I just don't feel comfortable with the whole poofing process and the kneading and if I have to take out the rolling pin and measure to get everything perfectly square or rectangular or round... I just break out in hives.

So of course when I saw the choice for Tuesday with Dorie, that Susan of Food.baby had chosen I said a little prayer and then had a bit doubts which turned into a full blown conversation with my bad-ass self telling me to get a grip and reminded me that "I did no join a baking club to sit and do the baking that I'm comfortable doing!" 

So of course I had to do this.  Be one with the yeast and conquer my fears.

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