Purple Grape Jam with White Bread Loaf

I had been eyeing this jam for a couple of months now and i had been sceptical of baking bread for even longer. Then i saw my friend bake bagels from scratch and knew it was time for me to draw some inspiration. I had been telling her that i would bake a bread from her blog because she was doing it all too easily and all too frequently.  I may have been postponing it because nobody was asking me to do these. If i did make both bread and jam from scratch, it would be solely for me. The husband won't touch bread especially when it has jam in it (will eat Subway breads only!). And is not much of a breakfast person either. I decided i should do it for my own satisfaction. Boy was i happy. I finished making jam at 5 in the evening, then made these for the husband to snack on and finally pushed my bread into the oven. Fresh bread came out at 8 pm. And i didn't have the patience to wait till breakfast to try these out. So my dinner came in the form of purple jam lathered over freshly baked and sliced bread. I have no complaints. Making something from scratch going slightly out of your comfort zone gives tremendous satisfaction. And for me, i have not done anything so elaborate just myself after getting married. Usually when the husband is out and i have to cook only for myself, i have only ever made Maggi noodles or eaten left over rice from the morning or convinced him to bring me takeaway. So to go out to such lengths to prepare something only for myself wasn't bad at all. I should try it again sometime.

The source recipe used concord grapes with seeds. I have no idea what the grapes i buy at the local farmers market are called, we only get four varieties green or black and with seeds or seedless. Now from the moment i saw that recipe my mind could only think of simplifying the jam using seedless grapes. I wasn't going to skin the grapes, cook the remaining pulp, strain it and add the skins back. But at that time i couldn't find black seedless grapes so i bought a half kilo of green grapes instead and this happened a couple of times as i ended up eating them as fruits. (I know, eating fruits as they are! i must have been possessed!) Now ever since i had seen this grape jam recipe i had been smitten by the purple colour rendered  by the skin of the black grapes. But because my laziness took over, i was willing to compromise that using green grapes. Then surprise! i found seedless black grapes in the market. And that is how this incredibly beautiful jam came to be.

Jam recipe modified from here

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 20-30 minutes
Yield: About 3 cups

Ingredients for Jam

1 kilo seedless black grapes (4 cups)

2 cups sugar

Method

1. Remove the grapes from their stem, wash and drain them. Crush them coarsely by pulsing in a blender for 4 seconds or using a hand blender. 
2. Pour into a heavy bottomed saucepan on medium-high heat. Once the grape pulp comes to a simmer add the sugar and mix it in.
3. Now stir continuously for 15-30 minutes on medium-high heat until the mixture becomes syrupy, slightly thickens and jam is formed.

When done, the jam should coat the spoon without being runny. Or when a little jam is placed on a cold plate, placed back in the fridge for a few seconds, should have wrinkled top layer when pushed.

Perfect breakfast with home-made bread, purple grape jam and fresh green grape juice

I also made a simple white bread loaf to go with the jam. As promised I used the recipe from Anita's Sliceofmylyfe and allowed for two rises, but used the continuous kneading technique from my previous orange bread loaf.

Linking this to the event "Spotlight: Colourful Holi" by Chandrani of Cuisine Delights.
Sending this to Rasi's event 'I am the star' at Vegetarian Food & Me.
Linking this to Srav's Vegan Diet: Only Plant food
Linking this to Ramya's event ABC Series: Fruit Fiesta

And linking this to Sobha's Just 4 fun event at Good Food.