Onion Dill Bread -- The Loaf I Bake When the Pork Shoulder Feeds the Men Who Need Feeding

August. The light is still long but you can feel the angle changing. The sun comes up a little south of where it did in July and the shadows in the corral fall a little different at five in the afternoon and the smart cattle have started picking the high spots in the pasture for the cool of the morning. The land knows it is August before the calendar does.

The Bozeman writers conference Saturday. I drove down Friday afternoon, three hours, stayed in a motel that smelled like every motel in America, did the panel at ten Saturday morning, did a signing for an hour after, drove home Saturday afternoon. The panel was three writers — a poet, a memoirist, and me — talking about regional voice. I said maybe a quarter of the words on the panel. The other two said most of them. I am okay with that. The questions afterward were specific and serious and one woman asked about cooking elk and another about the chapter on my mother and I answered both and felt, for once, that I could be useful in this kind of room because the questions were about the work and not about me. The signing line was thirty people. I signed thirty books in fifty minutes. A man in his late fifties, lean, weathered, came through near the end and said, I was in Iraq. I read your book. Thanks. Did not say anything else. Did not need to. I shook his hand and he walked away and that interaction was worth the drive and the motel and every minute of the panel and probably worth the writing of the book.

Came home Saturday night exhausted in the way these trips exhaust me. Slept ten hours. Got up Sunday and did chores in silence with Patrick on the porch and Mom in the garden and the second cutting drying in the field and a yellowjacket nest I would have to deal with by the corral and a heifer who was looking off — not lame, not coughing, just off — that I would watch through the week. Real life. The kind I am suited for. The kind that does not require me to talk for an hour to a microphone.

Second cutting baled Tuesday. Five hundred and eighty bales. Smaller than last year by a hundred and fifty but acceptable. Stacked in the second barn by Wednesday evening. Now I wait on third cutting, which depends on whether August will be hot or kind. Forecast says hot.

Tom Whelan and I shod a difficult horse Thursday — a young Arabian gelding belonging to a couple from California who had moved to Big Timber and bought a hobby place. The horse had been mishandled at some point and would not stand for the back feet. Took us four hours. Tom did most of the work because he is steadier than I am and the horse needed steady. We finished at one in the afternoon. The couple paid us four hundred dollars for the four hours which is way too much and Tom told them so and they paid us anyway. We split it sixty-forty in Tom's favor because he had done the harder work, and because Tom's wife is in a memory care unit in Billings and the bills come out of his social security, and because every dollar I can move toward Tom is a dollar that goes somewhere it should go. He did not argue. We have been doing this kind of accounting for years.

Cooked a pork shoulder Saturday for the AA guys again. Eight people now. Vince and Dale and Pete and Marcus and three new guys Marcus had brought, plus Tom Whelan who I had asked because Tom does not drink either and because Tom needs Saturday nights more than he will admit. I had the shoulder on at seven in the morning and we ate at six in the evening and the men who came stayed until ten and the fire was just coals by then and the conversation had moved through trucks and weather and old dogs and into territory that men who do not drink find their way to in firelight, which is to say nothing dramatic, nothing public, just men telling true things in the half-light, which is what fires are for and have always been for. Tom said, on the way to his truck, This is a kind of church, and I said, I know it is, and I went inside and slept five hours and that was the week.

The shoulder does the main work — eleven hours, smoke and fat and patience — but bread on a table like that says something the meat alone cannot. I started baking this onion dill loaf for these Saturday nights maybe a year ago and now the men expect it, which is how you know a thing has become part of something real. Tom Whelan took the heel piece on his way to his truck. He did not say anything about it. That was enough.

Onion Dill Bread

Prep Time: 20 min + 1 hr 30 min rise | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: ~2 hr 25 min | Servings: 12 slices

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 standard packet)
• 1/4 cup warm water (105–115°F)
• 1 cup cottage cheese, small curd
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tablespoons dried minced onion
• 2 teaspoons dried dill weed
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading

Instructions

1. Activate the yeast. Dissolve yeast in the warm water and let stand 5 to 10 minutes until foamy. If it does not foam, the yeast is dead — start over.
2. Warm the cottage cheese. In a small saucepan over low heat, warm the cottage cheese and butter together just until the butter melts and the mixture reaches about 110°F. Do not boil. Remove from heat.
3. Mix the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, combine the warmed cottage cheese mixture, sugar, salt, baking soda, egg, minced onion, and dill weed. Stir until combined. Add the activated yeast mixture and stir again.
4. Add flour. Add flour one half cup at a time, stirring after each addition, until a soft, slightly sticky dough forms. You may need a tablespoon or two more flour — the dough should pull away from the bowl but still feel soft.
5. Knead. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 6 to 8 minutes until smooth and elastic. The dough will be softer than a traditional bread dough; resist the urge to add too much flour.
6. First rise. Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover with a clean towel, and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
7. Shape and second rise. Punch the dough down. Shape into a round loaf and place in a greased 9-inch round cake pan or on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise 30 minutes.
8. Bake. Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is deep golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. An internal temperature of 190°F confirms doneness.
9. Cool. Let cool on a wire rack at least 15 minutes before slicing. It will slice cleaner if you give it time, but no one at a gathering ever waits that long and that is fine too.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 155 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 3g | Carbs: 26g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 270mg