While at the cottage, I decided that I should make the bread that everybody would be eating. I started off with a few loaves of crusty white breadmaker bread (yes, I brought the breadmaker to the cottage, we weren’t roughing it by any means). Then I got tired of that and decided to whip up some marbled pesto bread from page 142 of Bread Machine: How to Prepare and Bake the Perfect Loaf (Jennie Shapter, 2002).

I made this bread a little while back and it was an instant hit, so I had to bake it again. This time I cut back the salt on the topping from 2 tsp to 1/2 tsp, which produced a flavour I much preferred. I also didn’t have an appropriately-sized loaf pan at the cottage, so I had to improvise and use a large roasting pan, which the loaf sat inside with room to spare, never touching the sides. This is how I ended up with a more “cottage loaf” look. It still cooked through properly and tasted great, which is what really matters.

The filling I used this time was nasturtium-leaf pesto, which isn’t quite as oily as garlic scape pesto, and has a slightly peppery kick. It was a different flavoring, but very tasty.

As a treat, I whipped up some banana chocolate chip bread while the pesto bread was rising. I just added a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips to the banana bread cockaigne recipe from the Joy of Cooking app. I baked it in a silicone bundt pan that belongs to the cottage, and though I wasn’t terribly happy with the heat distribution in the pan, it still turned out rather tasty. The kids are it up as fast as I’d let them.