Portuguese Sweet Bread

   

     The Portuguese Sweet Bread was truly the most aromatic bread I have baked.  The recipe I used from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice called for orange, lemon, and vanilla extracts.  I used Fiori di Sicilia in place of the orange and lemon extracts.   The bread bakes to a beautiful deep mahogany color.  This has also been the darkest bread I’ve baked so far.  The taste is very similar to Kings Hawaiian Sweet Bread.  It has a slightly sweet taste to it, and a very soft tender interior.  It made great French toast (Wayne was amused by the idea of Portuguese French toast).  It also was really good toasted with a little butter.  It was just wonderful to nosh on.
     I couldn’t help but thinking this sweet bread would make a really good ham sandwich.  I could almost taste it - a sandwich loaded with thinly sliced Chisesi’s ham, creamy havarti, a little mayo, a dab of creole mustard, some shredded lettuce, and sliced creole tomatoes.  Heck, it would be good with just mayo and creole tomatoes.  Just two little problems - no Chisesi’s ham and no creole tomatoes.  And no, there just are no substitutes that even comes close to either.  Before my mother had sold her house and moved in with Wayne and me, she would always have a little vegetable garden.  I don’t think that any New Orleanian with a vegetable garden does not have creole tomatoes in it.  My mother had cucumber, yellow squash, eggplant, and creole tomato plants in her garden.  One year she planted 8 tomato plants.  I felt like I spent the whole summer canning tomatoes and figs.  (She had a huge fig tree and two pecan trees in the back yard.)  It was amazing to see how many tomatoes she got from those plants. 
     Talk of tomatoes always brings me to my wonderful and loving husband, Wayne.  I know he loves me because he puts up with all my shenanigans.  We were not long married and living in the condo from hell when my brother insisted we take home a cherry tomato plant in a pot.  I knew the plant would not get enough sunlight to produce tomatoes, but Wayne was ever the optimist.  He watered, fed, and nurtured that plant.  It grew and looked quite healthy, but no tomatoes.  Since I have an “impish” control disorder (okay, I’m just plain bad), I went to my mother’s house, cut some fully ripened cherry tomatoes from her plant, and wired them onto our plant.  When Wayne got home, and went to water his plant, he was thrilled to see tomatoes.  He came in so excited, and then he thought, “Wait.  That plant never flowered.  There were never any green tomatoes on it.”  He went back to examine the plant, by this time I could not control my laughter.  Wayne hates it when I tell this story, but I think it shows how wonderful he is, and how mischievous I am.  I am one lucky woman to have a man who loves despite my impishness.