Toast & Coffee

A Winter Morning on 6 snowy acres at 9 degrees Fahrenheit – Pancake Stacks - 80s Flashbacks

Because food is so closely related to memories, I try not to over-complicate recipes.  Some things take longer to prepare and cook but nothing I make ever requires any special equipment, strange gelling agents or specialty, hard-to-find ingredients.  I just like to cook simple food, very well, involving as little fuss possible, using the highest quality ingredients around.  Example:  I prefer buttermilk pancakes as opposed to lemon-ricotta pancakes.  As wonderful as lemon-ricotta pancakes are, when I eat them, I think of a fancy restaurant I visited in a big city as opposed to sitting at my kitchen table in the 80’s, in Warren, Michigan, drowning a giant stack of Bisquick pancakes, lovingly made by my mother, in Mrs. Butterworths syrup. 

Presently, I choose Pastry flour, sugar, a couple magical leavening agents, buttermilk and eggs over Bisquick and real maple syrup, from a tree, of course, over Mrs. Butterworths – as lovely as it was back then. Eating buttermilk pancakes today still allows me to peer through the smokescreen of a far away place.  And it is literally a smokescreen because it was the 80s and many people smoked.  I see my mother sitting at our bar counter on the blue, vinyl spinning bar stools, smoking a Winston, drinking a cup of coffee, flicking her ashes into a glass ashtray-that was probably heavy enough to take down an unwanted intruder-talking on the olive-green phone with the 10-foot bouncy cord that hung on our wall. 

My mother became very efficient at pancakes for a big crowd of little kids.  She would make them for an entire slumber party in a small kitchen with an electric stove.  It still amazes me what she was able to produce.  When we got a little older, she started making them very thin, stacking 8-10 on a plate with a layer of real butter and syrup in between each pancake, turning it into a decadent layer cake.  I highly recommend trying this amazing concoction.

I digress, this isn’t supposed to be about pancakes but this particular era overtakes my thoughts with vast food memories.

This is about something far simpler – Toast & Coffee.  As a little kid I ate a lot of toast and coffee for breakfast because it was one of my mom’s favorite meals.  And, yes, as little kids, we drank coffee.  My grandmother used to mix Nestle Quik chocolate powder into our coffee and it was delicious.  Most of the bread that my mom used was the white, soft, square-shaped bread from the bread section of the grocery store and even though I wouldn’t touch that kind of bread now, I loved it as a kid.  Sometimes she sent us to the corner bakery named the Sweetheart Bakery and the kind old ladies who worked there would give us free cookies.  My mom would load up the coffee with whole milk, 2-3 teaspoons of sugar and put a stack of toasted, buttered, cut-down-the-middle bread at our places at the table.  The key is to dip the buttery bread into the sugary coffee just before the soggy happens.  On rare occasions my mom would make homemade bread, slice it a little thicker than the grocery store bread, and even as a kid I remember the homemade stuff being far superior.

Today is Tuesday and it is my one day off of the week so I enjoy every moment.  It is the last day of January in northern Michigan and it is currently 9 degrees outside and peacefully snowing.  My kids are at school, my husband is at the gym, my quiet company is my grey cat staring at the part of the wall the field mice live and constantly scurry.  I added a little Rye to my coffee this morning, don’t judge, and stared at the yard for a while, pondering which spot under the trees are we going to one day keep the pigs.  The morning will perfectly end with Pugliese (an Italian rustic bread) toast & coffee.  If you’ve never had this particular breakfast but are interested in trying it, I hope you find the same happy comfort in it as I do. 

The Grown-Up Version of Toast & Coffee

Bread

I suggest a rustic bread from a bakery or a very hardy multigrain bread.

I toast it until it is a little past the point of regular toast but not burnt.  This way you can leave it in your coffee a little longer to soak up more goodness. 

Real butter – unsalted – but then sprinkle a little sea salt on top.  I promise – there is a dramatic taste difference then simply using salted butter.

Coffee

Strong

Black

With a shot of Rye – my favorite, currently, is Bulleit - I’m not advertising for them, I collect no payment, I simply enjoy the taste.

Cheers! To snowy, cold mornings and comforting food memories.