I have been thinking a lot lately about food and cooking – even more so than usual, and that’s saying something.

One thing that has struck me is our insistence on “improving” old recipes.

Take banana pudding, for instance. Our grandmothers made it with ripe bananas and milk and egg yolks and vanilla and flour or cornstarch.

Then food manufacturers figured out a way to make it easier, and boxed mixes were born.

But as it turns out, instant pudding doesn’t really taste all that great.

So did we return to the simplicity of the basic cooked pudding?

Not so much.

Instead, we learned to jazz it up a bit. Food Network cooks taught us to add cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk and fancy store-bought butter cookies to the boxed mix.

There’s nothing wrong with recipes like that – they are, of course, delicious. With an ingredients list like that one, they’d have to be.

But they’re also incredibly expensive. That jazzed-up banana pudding recipe would cost around $14 to make today, and that total doesn’t even include the cost of the milk or the bananas.

In contrast, the old-fashioned method calls for very little other than milk and bananas. Add a bit of whipped topping and vanilla wafers, and you’ve got a delicious dessert for just a few dollars.

Unfortunately, institutional memory only lasts so long, and the things my grandmas took for granted are not necessarily things I remember.

For example, I made old-fashioned banana pudding just this past weekend. The pudding wasn’t perfectly smooth, but it was tasty.

Unfortunately, I didn’t wait for the pudding to cool before I topped it. My grandma would have known better.

(She also would not have used Cool Whip to top it. I know it’s not as authentic as sweetened whipped cream, but what can I say? I like it anyway.)

But you know what happens to Cool Whip when you put it on warm pudding? The same thing that would happen to whipped cream, I imagine.

It melts. It melts into a puddle right on top of the lovely pudding you just made.

I ended up scraping the whole casserole dish full of pudding into the trash can.

Have I mentioned that I am tired of kitchen fails?

Well, I am.

And so after my fail this Sunday, I was eager to return to something that I felt reasonably sure I could pull off.

That’s why I made a loaf of this English muffin bread tonight.

It’s like a mashup of a quick bread and a yeast bread, using a mixture of baking soda and yeast for leavening.

In other words, this recipe produces a loaf of crusty bread in just an hour and a half.

It’s not as chewy as a loaf that’s been kneaded and twice-risen, but it’s a heck of a lot quicker and easier.

And if you’ve ever had home-baked bread of any kind, you already know it’s miles better than any loaf of sliced bread from a grocery store.

Try this recipe next time you get a hankering for your grandma’s kitchen but don’t have time to make a traditional loaf of bread. It’s perfect toasted for breakfast or as a side with soup.

ENGLISH MUFFIN BREAD

(adapted from Our Best Bites)

Ingredients
3 cups (12.75 ounces) all-purpose flour (I highly recommend using a kitchen scale for this if possible)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon yeast
1 cup buttermilk (or milk)
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoon neutral cooking oil

Directions
■ Grease a loaf pan. In a large mixing bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, and yeast and set aside. In a saucepan over medium heat, mix liquid ingredients (buttermilk or milk, water, and oil). Bring temperature up to about 110 degrees. (You can test the temperature on the inside of your wrist; it should feel like a warm – not hot – bath temperature.) Pour liquid ingredients into dry ingredients. Beat the mixture on high speed for about a minute. Batter will be loose and sticky.
■ Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and cover with plastic wrap or tea towel. Set pan in a warm area to rise for about one hour while you preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
■ Bake bread for about 22-24 minutes, until top is golden brown. Allow bread to cool in pan for about five minutes before turning out onto cooling rack or cutting board. Allow to cool completely before slicing (if this is possible in your home… it never is in mine).

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.