Make my own bread

Since I lost my job as a frugal person I think it would be fun to make my own bread. I think it will taste better than the two loafs I buy at the grocery shop every week

Just loved it!

I missed taking a picture and now it’s all eaten up… ;-)
It was very good and I loved doing the dough with my whole new Kenwood machine.

Bought some bread mix. Added the right amount of lukewarm water to the right amount of breadmix. Remembered to take the bread mould out of the maker so excess flour wouldn’t fall onto the heating elements.

Chose to make a 700g in weight farmhouse loaf. Medium crust.

Timer told me this would take 3 and a half hours in total.

3 and a half hours later it beeped to say all over. I rushed through to kitchen to see what looks like a nice loaf. I will have to wait till it all cools and I can tip the loaf out of the tin. Ooh almost cannot wait! My own bread!

Bought a breadmaker but still aim to make by hand one day.

I dug out The Book of Bread which I either stole from my Dad many years ago (copyright is 1982) or picked up mad cheap at a used bookstore when I thought I wanted to cook bread a million years ago but never did. You pick as either option is probably equally good at this point.

You may be asking yourself, oat flour? Or not. Either way, I made my own by pulverizing oats in my spice grinder (okay, it’s a coffee grinder I use for spices and keep very clean). Tah-dah! Here are the ingredients:

salt, yeast, milk, butter, currants, oat flour, maple syrup, bread flour, all purpose flour and whole wheat flour (warm water not pictured)

To start, the water and yeast is dissolved in a bowl. In the meantime, the milk, butter and salt is heated over the stove until butter is melted and salt is dissolved:

Once I’m sure the heated mixture is lukewarm, I mix it in with the yeast. From this point, I mix in the oat flour, bread flour, wheat flour and maple syrup. The object is to mix everything together and then add the all-purpose flour until it becomes hard to stir:

The dough is sticky, but no longer stirable. I knead it carefully until it forms a decent ball:

At this point, it’s rise number one. Recipe calls for an hour, but I’m using quick-rise, so I check in half an hour – it’s looking good:

All that’s really left is to knead in the dried cranberries. I do this by using the envelope method of kneading and just sprinkling in a few cranberries each time I fold:

At this point, I’ve separated the dough into two pieces so I can form it into two loaves. I put these into greased pans and let them rise. They’re simply supposed to double and I let it go about half an hour:

At this point, my bread bakes 45 minutes and smells great. The maple and the whole wheat smell fill the house. There isn’t a ton of spring, but between the oat and wheat flour, I’m not super surprised. When I cut into it, though, I get a great-looking loaf. I also get a really soft bread. Husband has been snacking on it like a crazed man. I’m trying to hold back and be sane:

Last night I finally made my first batch of bread… Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Swirl with Cinnamon and Sugar Crust. Hooooooooly moly, it’s DELICIOUS!!

I was too tired to take pictures of the process this time, but here’s my finished product. I had a couple of pieces for breakfast this morning, and I have to say that it was definitely worth all the effort.

Today I’m going to be making Casatiello, a savory bread with meat and cheese. Hopefully that will go as well as this did!!!!

My friend makes bread in a breadmaker. Simply delicious.

Question is – Do I continue to try to find the time to do the whole thing by hand or give in and buy a breadmaker.

I don’t want to do this once. I want it to become a habit.

Well, first the bad news – the KitchenAid has suffered defeat. Last week, when making a second batch of pizza dough (at the very end!), a bad sound was made. A very bad sound and we opened it up to find that the worm gear stripped. Carnage can be witnessed here:

It looks worse than it is because of their industrial grease, but parts are on order. Le sigh.

This meant seeking out more by-hand stuff. You know, because people actually do make bread by hand. For serious. I heard about it once from this friend of a friend. ;) Flipping through Savory Baking from the Mediterranean, I find a recipe for French Country Bread. Not only is it mixed by hand, but it has 3 ingredients – 4 if you count water in various forms. I decide to try this today.

Ingredients:

Yeast, flour, water and salt. That’s it, I promise no one isn’t pictured – well, unless you count ice cubes during baking. But they’re still water. But that’s it.

There is a trick to this – it’s making a poolish which is just a fancy word for gooey yeast sponge. Basically, mix step #1 is a little bit of flour, water and the yeast:

It has a sort of “paper mache paste out waaay to long” consistency to it, but you mix it up, cover it and set it aside. Instructions say 3 hours, but I’m using fast-rise yeast, so I check it in an hour and 45 – I’m good to go. It looked like bubbly pancake batter.

Now, it’s just salt, flour, the poolish and a little more water. The trick is to fold in the poolish carefully and mix it until you have a sticky dough. There did come a point where I needed to mix the last bit by hand (carefully – I didn’t want to kill all the yeast bubbles by pulverizing the dough) so I could knead the sticky mess:

Kneading this isn’t actually as bad as one thinks it might be. Yes, it’s sticky, but I’m generous with the flour and I take the “letter” approach. basically, I push out the flour gently with the heel of my hand so I can pull up the dough and fold the top towards the middle and then fold the bottom up over the top like I was folding a letter. I then repeat the process in opposite directions. This kneading gets me a much smoother dough.

The instructions are clear, though, they want you to knead in two steps. Just a few minutes to smooth, rest for 15 minutes and then knead to elastic. Since the dough is still somewhat damp-ish, I follow the recipe advice and cover it with it’s mixing bowl to save it from drying out. My dough does look nicely kneaded when I’m done:

I promise that was actually a fresh bowl in the last shot. I added flour while it went through a rise. Again, fast-acting yeast means the recommended hour was cut to 30 minutes:

At this point, I form this into my round loaf (just a quick knead and form). There’s now another round of rising – this time under a damp towel. I’ve moved this over to my pizza peel because that’s how the bread is going to be transferred to my now-warming oven (with pizza stone in it). The rise went mostly up and only a little out, so it doesn’t look all that dramatic (1 hour cut to 30 minutes again):

I’m now ready for the final touches. First, scoring. If you look closely, you can see that my “light hand” got a wee bit heavy in the back. I’ve dusted my top. I’ve also got a cake pan that’s been heating on my bottom rack in the oven along with the pizza stone on the middle rack. Here’s my prep:

As I put this in a 450 degree oven, I throw the ice cubes in the hot cake pan and slam the oven door shut – instant steam! I know it’s no substitute for a steam injected oven, but I’m not a bajillionaire, so it’s what I’ve got. I bake at that temperature for 15 minutes and then lower it to 350 for 35 minutes. I get this:

You can see how it continued to poof up. You could also hear it “crackle” as it cooled out on the counter. It was a wonderful sound. After it cooled, we cut in and got this:

It was fluffy and hearty, but not heavy. The crust from the steam had developed this lovely chewiness to it. It was great stuff. Time consuming, yes, but great stuff when you realize this was just flour, water, yeast and salt.