Multigrain Bread

     I baked the Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire from The Bread Baker's Apprentice Friday evening; it was wonderful warm from the oven, and it made even better toast this morning.  It is a dense loaf with a lot of texture, and it is super flavorful.  When I used to buy bread, I always bought a whole-grain bread, and that is exactly what this bread is.  This will absolutely become a staple.   The recipe affords some options for ingredients.  One of the things I was able to use in it was quinoa.  I only became familiar with quinoa this year, and discovered I like it.  If you don't know about it, look it up on the web and find the wide variety of recipes for it.  The recipe also called for wheat bran, which of course I could not locate around here, but after doing a little research I found I could substitute wheat germ.  In his book, Chef Reinhart said he likes to top this bread with poppy seeds, but I used some oats on the top.  I thought the oats would look better with this bread.  I also took a small piece of the bread after the first rise, braided it, allowed it to rise, and after the second rise I slit the loaf and placed the braid in the slit.  I wanted to see how it would turn out.
     This was not the type of bread I was raised on.  I was raised on typical soft white bread.  You know - the kind that sticks to the back of your teeth or the roof of your mouth.  I still love this type of bread with extra crunchy peanut butter on it.  It's a guilty pleasure.  The white bread of my youth was Sunbeam Bread which brings back many blissful memories.  I remember when Sunbeam Bread bought a baby elephant for the Audubon Zoo, Little Miss Sunbeam.  I could hardly wait to go to the zoo to see her.  She was adorable.
     My favorite memory of Sunbeam Bread was free rides at Pontchartrain Beach.  At the end of the school year, you would bring your report card to Pontchartrain Beach and based on  good grades you would get tickets for free rides.  It just didn't get any better than that.  My poor mother, she would load her car down with kids from the neighborhood and my cousin Linda and take us to the "beach."  She would give us a time to meet her by the stage.  Naturally, we would not be there at the appointed time.  She  would then start rounding us up.  She would find some of us, instruct us to stay put, while she looked for the rest of us.  Naturally, when she would find the rest of us and go to the spot the first group was told not to leave, they were gone.  This would go on until closing time.  Finally all of us gathered up and put in the car, we headed home.  By this time we were all hyped up from fast rides and cotton candy.  We kids would start arguing. I can still hear my mother, "Stop it!  If you don't stop, I'm going to drive us into the lake and kill us all."  This kept us quiet for all of 5 minutes, and we were at it again.  My mother was one helluva great and patient woman.  She worked all day, and still would do things with us once she got home.  She always had time for us. I can't begin to count the times she took us to the "Old Beach" to go swimming.  Once when my mother took my brother, my cousin Linda, and me swimming, there was a police check point  on the way home where the police were checking for driver's license, brake tags, and license plates; needless to say,  my mother did not have her license on her.  (For those of you who are not from New Orleans a brake tag is a vehicle inspection sticker.)  She also found out that it was unlawful to drive without shoes on (which she used to do all the time).  There we were all of us in damp bathing suits, and my cousin Linda starts crying, "We're going to jail.  I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to be a jailbird."  She is bawling out loud and repeating her jail statements.  My brother and I were frightened by this point.  I think the poor cop was overwhelmed.  He got more than he bargained for when he stopped us.  He didn't know what to do.  He followed us home to verify that my mother did indeed have a license.  He let her off with a warning.  Personally I think he did it more for himself than for her.  Ah - childhood memories.