Bread

There's something about cold snowy days that makes me crave freshly-baked bread. 

I suppose it's because it's the perfect excuse to stay indoors on a wintry day, while the steam from the oven fogs up the kitchen windows and gently blurs the landscape outside into indistinguishable shapes in different shades of white.

So when we returned from spending Christmas in Rhode Island to find Toronto almost knee-deep in fresh snow, I knew it was a sign I'd picked just the right recipe for this month's Secret Recipe Club post - a giant triple-loaf recipe for Limpa, a Swedish rye bread perfumed with orange, fennel and caraway seed....

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There was a time when much of the wheat grown in Ontario (and, for that matter, the rest of Canada) was a variety known as Red Fife. First grown in Peterborough, just a couple of hours away from Toronto, it was a hardy and adaptable variety that was perfectly suited to Canada's climate.

All good things must come to an end, though, so after spending the better part of a century as the grain of choice for Canadian farmers, Red Fife's popularity faded in the early 20th century when farmers began turning to other wheat varieties with shorter growing times and higher yields. Within a few decades, the grain that had built the Canadian prairies was all but forgotten, and might even have vanished completely if it weren't for a single pound of seed that found its way into the hands of the Heritage Seed Project in 1988. That year, Red Fife was planted in the Heritage Seed Project's fields, setting in motion a comeback of epic proportions....

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