DOWLING — There is likely no greater staple in food than bread. Today’s Cook’s Corner features homemade
bread from the kitchen of Harriette Ashton.
For years she always made her own bread, but like most of us started buying her bread at the stores —
until that one day she read the lengthy list of ingredients on the wrapper.
“I was shocked,” Ashton said. “It took almost half the wrapper. I didn’t want all that stuff for me or
for my family.”
About four or five years ago she started baking all her own bread again. Her family has no complaints.
She bakes a variety of breads from time to time. For the Sentinel-Tribune she chose a Mixed-Grain Bread.
“It has no sugar and no salt,” Ashton said. “You can add salt but it really doesn’t need it.”
She said there is a great flexibility in this recipe as you can add a variety of items to the mix such as
dates, raisins, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
“The more stuff you add the smaller the size of the loaf,” Ashton cautioned.
She bakes roughly once a week, depending on how many grandchildren are around.
No two batches of bread will be the same, as she compared the size of the loaves just baked with the
previous batch, which rose much higher.
Ashton cited factors such as the humidity and other temperature factors.
“Sometimes it just depends on how you hold your mouth,” she joked, quoting her mother-in-law.
She said that was a way she would explain blips in the kitchen such as jelly that did not seal.
“But it all tastes the same.”
Ashton reminded cooks to not add hot ingredients to the dough as it will kill the yeast.
Ashton, like many women, learned to cook at the apron strings of her mother.
“My mom always cooked and baked and when I was married and with five kids, that’s what you did,” she
recalls.
Her baking expertise was always featured with her holiday pies and cakes for special occasions.
When not baking, Ashton enjoys knitting and quilting along with riding her horse.
Her current horse is 16 and Ashton no longer rides as much as she used to.
“I’ve had a horse since I was 8,” she said.
Ashton has also had her turn in the workforce while working in educational research and with a
veterinarian. She also helped a friend with her catering business and a deli in Perrysburg.
She is married to Richard, whose children have six grandchildren who keep the couple very busy.
She cannot even count the number of soccer games and musicals she has attended, not to mention track and
cross country meets, along with being entertained by varied instruments ranging from drums to violins.
“They are all pretty well-rounded,” Ashton said, noting the abundance of straight-A grade cards.
Those grandkids also get their choice of cakes for birthdays with both chocolate and carrot cakes being
popular.
They also love her cookies. Those are never a boxed cake nor cookies, but always made from scratch.
Those cookies will sometimes find their way into one of her collection of roughly 150 cookie jars that
line her kitchen and more.
The collection runs the gamut of routine to unique.
“I finally told my kids, ‘don’t buy me anymore,’” she said.
