The baking of the bread.

In my last post, I mentioned needing to bake our weekly supply of bread.  For this one, I thought I'd show some pics of that and talk a little bit about it.  I don't remember how many years I've been baking our bread now.  At least seven, possibly more like nine.  At first, it was intimidating, now I can almost do it in my sleep.  I say almost, because there have been a few times when my mind was occupied elsewhere and I forgot to put the yeast in, and inadvertently made what my family has come to call 'flat bread'. Which is not true flatbread, but my oops and attempt to salvage the dough rather than toss it out and start again.

So, if you've ever thought about trying your hand at making bread,  but thought it was something for expert cooks, don't be afraid!  Just give it a shot and it will most likely be edible (at least for the dog or chickens if not the humans, lol!) even if it doesn't turn out quite right.

Here's my basic recipe, which makes two loaves:
2.5 cups whole wheat flour
2.5-3.5 cups all purpose flour (unbleached if I can find it on sale, cheapest bleached brand if not)
2 tbsp ground flaxseed
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp shortening
1 tbsp salt
4 tsp yeast
2 1/4 cups very warm water (110-115 degrees or so)

Mix whole wheat flour, 1 cup all purpose flour, flaxseed, sugar, shortening, salt and yeast in a large bowl.  Add the water, stirring until all dry ingredients are moistened.  Then stir in remaining all purpose flour, 1/2 cup at a time until dough seems to stop taking up the new flour.

On a lightly floured surface, knead dough 5 minutes (approx. 300 times). if the dough gets sticky during kneading, just sprinkle some more flour down and knead in.  Sometimes mine takes up to another 1/2 cup of flour during kneading. Place into a greased (I used butter) bowl and cover with a cloth.  Let rise in a warm place approximately 1 hour, or until doubled in size.  Punch down dough, divide in half, roll out each half into an 8" x 15" rectangle, then shape each into a loaf by rolling the dough tightly onto itself from one 8" end to the other.  Place each loaf into a greased (again, butter) bread pan, cover with cloth and rise again until doubled, approx. 45 min to an hour.

Heat oven to 425 degrees.  When the oven is hot, place bread pans onto bottom rack of oven (remove the cloth cover first!) and bake 25 minutes.  When done, remove each loaf from it's pan and place on a wire rack on the counter to cool. Rub some butter on top of each loaf while hot.

the dough after it's first kneading, ready to rise (the brown flecks are the flaxseed)

after first rise (although it could have gone a little longer, the house was chilly, but I was in a time crunch)

punched, rolled into loaves, and ready for the second rise

the finished product, hot from the oven, with butter smeared on top (it soaks in after a few minutes)

I make two batches of bread, or four loaves, every week.  One loaf goes in the pantry to be eaten, the other three into the freezer to be taken out and thawed one loaf at a time to replace the one in the pantry.

I started baking bread because one of my children has allergies to things like preservatives and artificial sweeteners.  Buying enough wholesome loaves of bread without those common things to feed our four growing children was not in the weekly budget.  And I couldn't very well justify buying special bread just for the sensitive/allergic child, yet feed the 'bad bread' to the rest of us, could  I?  NO!  So I started baking.  As you can see from my recipe, the ingredients are all pretty basic.  Nothing artificial there, except maybe the shortening, depending on where you stand on that issue.  I did try substituting lard  (home rendered, of course, not the shelf stable stuff with preservatives in it from the store) once for the shortening, but the family didn't like the difference in taste.  So shortening it is.

A batch of bread takes me about 3 hours, start to finish.  Sounds like too much of a commitment just to save a few dollars a loaf?  Well, most of that 3 hours is rising time and baking, during which I do other stuff.  The mixing and kneading and rolling and shaping into loaves takes oh, about 30 minutes total.  So, during the three hours I was baking bread the other day, I was also:

• boiling sap for syrup (a future post on this, I promise :) )
• doing 2 loads of laundry
• making white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for my Farmer's Market meeting yesterday evening (another future post on my farmer's market stuff)
• visiting a few of my favorite websites
• talking to my DH on the phone (he was calling to see what I was up to and check what was on the calendar for that evening)

Even if you work, if you spend 3 hours of the evening after work watching TV or surfing the Internet, you can squeeze in making some bread. Give up the first 20-30 minutes of your normal evening routine to get the dough going (first time will take longer, the more you do it the faster you'll get--I spend about 20 min to mix and knead two batches).  Watch TV the next hour while it rises.  Punch down and shape into loaves on a commercial break.  More TV for the second rise.  Turn on the oven during a commerical.  Watch more TV.  When the oven is hot, pop the loaves into the oven during a commercial.  Go watch TV again.  See, you've got time!  Go ahead, don't be afraid, give it a try!