toast with tomato

Toast. Step 1: make bread.

This is 25% whole wheat milled from grain at home. The rest is A/P, the yeast is commercial. The bread is made with egg, butter, milk, all of which tend to inhibit rising. These extraneous ingredients that inhibit rising produce compressed loaves and fairly prevent the formation of large bubbles. It's not for everybody, but it's for me. I do love this stuff, dense as it is. I make it even more grainy by running a handful of wheat kernels through a coffee grinder to a coarse consistency. The mill's most coarse setting is too fine to suit me.

I do have a toaster but rarely use it. Takes up counter space and it toasts too thoroughly. That is, it dries out the bread completely through. Instead, I use a lavish amount of olive oil / butter mixture and fry the bread in a hot pan. It takes a little longer but then I can use the same pan to fry a few eggs.

Hothouse tomatoes with sea salt.