promised cross sections

Normally, when I photograph food, I try for a far-off establishing shot to give you a bird's-eye view, then I come in with a tighter shot. There may be a really close food-porn shot, and if I'm dealing with a layered food like a cake or a lasagna, or any kind of food that can reveal something more through a cross section, I go for the cross-section shot. Simply photographing the top of a pie reveals nothing. People want to see interiors because this lets them experience the dimensionality of the food. I'm sure these principles can be applied to non-food items. For example, when I remember to, I try to take establishing shots of blossoming bushes before zooming in for flowery closeups, but I know I'm not consistent with that. (I really need to take photography lessons so I can finally learn what "f-stop" and "depth of field" mean.)

Anyway, I promised cross-section shots of my bread, so here they are:

A lot of the dark bits you're seeing are parsley. And Everything Bagel seasoning.

Here's a food-porny closeup on one slice:

I've found that, because this bread gets heavier and denser as it cools, it's better for building open-face sandwiches so that you're not confronted with so much breadness.

sliced chicken, pepper salami, Gouda, and mustard

In the pic below, I'm prepping my final loaf for smoked salmon.

I just thought this looked pretty.

It's not exactly a bagel with lox and cream cheese, but that'll do, Pig.

Didn't mean to make an eyeless smiley face.

Open-face sandwiches, crostini... maybe cubed-up croutons. These are the things this sort of bread is ideal for. (Maybe French toast, too!) If I can find a way to tweak the recipe to produce lighter bread, I'll try, but soda breads are traditionally dense, and that's even truer when your flour is made from almonds. Anything made with almond flour tends to be heavy and dense, and depending on what you're making, you may need some chemical help (xanthan gum, etc.) to hold the whole thing together while also keeping the end product flexible. I'm not sure whether this sort of bread would be good if redone as a regular loaf in a standard loaf pan; I suspect the resulting slices of bread would be too crumbly for, say, a tuna sandwich. But this bread is absolutely awesome when you slice it thinly and toast it up in a pan with butter. I'm thankful to have found this recipe.

This weekend's experiments: yeast bread with (1) no flaxseed meal and more oat fiber and (2) no oat fiber and more flaxseed meal. Maybe one of those won't be bitter. We'll soon find out. Expect more reports over the next couple of days.