Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

Cranberry Bread, Again

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This post originally appeared on Wild Yeast on November 19, 2007. This year, Thanksgiving dinner will be at my sister’s house, and my niece will bake the cranberry bread. The sentiment, however, remains the same. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving With (As Always) Cranberry Bread

This is the bread I will be serving at Thanksgiving dinner this year. It is the same bread I made last year, and just about every year since I learned how to turn on the oven. It is the same bread you will see here next year if this blog is still around. It’s cranberry-nut bread, the recipe clipped from the back of a long-ago Ocean Spray bag.

The rest of the menu will be similarly well-worn: roast turkey with the same chestnut stuffing we’ve had since my husband and I shared our first Thanksgiving, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, squash, creamed onions, apple pie, pumpkin pie.

I may vary the sweet potato treatment a bit from year to year. I add a brussels sprout or two if I the urge strikes me. I like to try new pumpkin pie recipes from time to time. But by and large, the menu is eminently simple and predictable.

This is not because I’m not an adventurous cook (although I’m the first to admit I’m not). It is because Thanksgiving dinner is not about the Cuisine, it’s about the Food. It’s about the familiar, abundant dishes you know will always be on your plate, year after year, dishes that come together to create what my husband calls “the perfect mouthful.” These are things that would be sorely missed if they weren’t on the table. This is food that tastes good without having to fuss with it. It’s food you know you can count on.

Now that I think about it, Thanksgiving dinner is a feast that’s a lot like the family I’ll be sharing it (whether physically or in spirit) with.

So no recipes today. The bread recipe is still on the back of the cranberry bag if you need it, but I suspect you don’t. Just make what you made last year.

Have a beautiful Thanksgiving, everyone!

CommentsLeave a comment

  3. What’s your recipe for chestnut stuffing? I’ve been looking for a good recipe. I found some fresh chestnuts at our family cabin and I picked a gallon ziploc bag full. We plan on roasting them to eat and put in stuffing, but I just have a few internet recipes, nothing that’s been “proven” by someone I trust.

  4. Susy, this comes from The Dictionary of American Food and Drink by John Mariani, a book I’ve had since the 1980s when I worked for a publishing company and once a year they held a book sale for employees where all the books were 6 for a dollar. This was the only way I could afford books back then 🙂 It’s a very simple recipe (remember, it’s from a dictionary, for goodness sake) but we like it.

    “Remove 3 lb. roast chestnuts from shells, saute in butter, and cover with boiling water to simmer for about 35 min. Drain, put half through a blender or ricer, chop other half in small pieces. Cover 1 cup raisins with boiling water and let stand 1 hr., then drain. Add 1 tbs. sugar and 1 grated lemon rind. Cook 3 tbs. finely chopped onions in butter till limp, add 6 cups bread crumbs, 1 tsp. salt and all ingredients. Toss, adding hot water if necessary for texture.”

  8. We’re like you — we eat mostly the same foods every year for all of the holidays. Actually, it bugs me as a cook, but people like traditional foods for holidays.

    I’m in a cooking group and one year I picked the theme to be “fantasy Thanksgiving” to give people a chance to make all those interesting sounding recipes that wouldn’t be tolerated on our own Thanksgiving tables. It was really fun!

  9. Happy Thanksgiving to you too!

    Thank you for sharing your gifts with bread & food with us for the year. Today I will start on your butternut brioche to bring to friends tomorrow.

  14. Well, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Holland but I do wish you a very happy Thanksgiving with your family an friends.

  15. I made this exact bread from the back of the ocean spray fresh cranberry bag as well this thanksgiving. I was so busy making sourdough rolls, Onion and Asiago Miche, a beautiful Chocalate Babke and a German Stollen that I barely had time to throw together the cranberry bread.

    In fact I was so painstakingly involved in making my other creations as beautiful as I could, I just kinda threw the ingredients together for the cranberry bread and barely even measured. And guess what everyone liked? You got it, the cranberry bread.

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