Homemade Bread

Sorry it has been a while.  There has been much going on in this one's life. 


Bread day!  The first thing I do when I start making bread is pitch my yeast.  This simply means putting the yeast warm water to get it to wake up.  It also ensure you have active live yeast.  If the yeast has gone bad, you do not want to waste all your time and ingredients because of inactive yeast.  To do this take a soup spoon worth of yeast and put in half a cup of warm water.  Stir it up.  In 5-10 minutes, the water should be foamy and smell, well, yeasty.  If it doesnt, you need new yeast.










The basic bread making process involves adding flour, yeast, and water together.  You knead the resulting dough to develop the gluten.  You let it rise to allow the yeast eat the sugars in the flour and release CO2 making air bubbles that are trapped by the gluten proteins.  You may punch it down and let it do it again to develop better flavor.  Then you shape the loaf and bake it. Pretty easy right?  It is.

White bread flour is really good as a base for bread because it is light a airy. Because it is basically sugar (compared to whole grain four) the yeast can eat it really well.  I use about half white bread flour and half something else.

Note: Sourdough requires the use of starter not yeast.  Separate post for that later.

Start with wheat flour and move on to rye or barley or any other that sounds interesting. 

This loaf was rye, wheat, honey, and whole flaxseed.

Basic Recipe

Ingredients:

1.5 Coffee Cup or cup white bread flour
1.5 cup of some other flour(s) - you can use white if you like but it is better for you in taste and actually with others
1 Soup spoonfuls of yeast
1/4 Cup warm water
1 Cup warm milk
2 Soup spoonfuls of kosher salt
2 Soup spoonfuls of honey
2 Soup spoonfuls butter or olive oil

Pitch yeast.  When yeast has been pitched add white bread flour, salt, honey, sugar, warm milk, butter or oil, other flour(s) and mix in bowl with yeast.  Add flour to dough until it is of a consistency that is moist but dry enough for you to work with.  I knead it in the bowl so it is less messy.  Just keep punching it down and reshaping it for 10 minutes.  This is the hard part.  It takes time and effort.  It is the key to delicious bread.  You should notice that the dough changes.  It will become elastic and springy.  If it a'int, than you are needing more kneading.  Cover bowl with wet towel.  Let rise for an hour and a half.





It should have risen to at least double its original size.  If it has not than you need to put it in a warmer place until this has happened.  (The oven on lowest setting for 10 minutes can work sometimes, just keep checking it.)  Punch it down. 






Shape the loaf to the desired shape.  Score it. (Cut down the center or in whatever way you like.)  Let it rise for an hour.  Bake in oven at 350 for 40 minutes or so. A nice trick for the crust is to add some water in a pan at the bottom of the oven for the first 7 or so minutes to get some steam in the oven.  You can also cook the bread on a pizza stone for a nice bottom crust. Let the bread rest for 5 minutes before you cut it.  Enjoy!

My favorite website for bread making tips is located here.

Bread the Prequel

Bread is one of man's most ancient of domesticated food.  Nobody needs me to tell them that it has been a staple of civilization for as long as there as been a civilization.  Somehow though, many have us have lost touch with the simplicity and beauty of making and eating freshly made bread.  I must be the first to admit, I have struggled in learning how to make bread.  I will also be the first to say, that most people I know that make their own bread do it better than I do.  But, I make great bread nonetheless.  It is cheaper, healthier, tastier, and just all around better than anything I can buy at that grocery store.  I typically make a large loaf of bread on Sunday and it lasts all week.  My recent favorite is a Rye, Wheat, Honey, Flaxseed loaf that is a little sweet and packed with flavor.


So what is bread?  Bread, like many great foods, is the result of tiny lifeforms doing their thing.  In this case bread yeast consumes the sugar or carbohydrates in flour and additives.  As it does this, it creates tiny air pockets from its digestion.  These air pockets become the holes in your bread or space between pieces of bread.  If bread is properly leavened (or risen) then when it bakes those holes become the size to which you are accustomed.  Bread may be chemically leavened with baking powder or cream of tartar, etc.  Who wants that?  Not me. Bread flour is a specific type of flour.  It has a higher protein or gluten content than regular or all-purpose flour. There are other proteins in flour besides gluten but it is the most important one.  This is because it gives elasticity to the dough.  Basically this allows the air pockets formed to stay intact when the bread is baked.  You will hear a lot about developing the gluten.  What this means is that you are stretching out the protein and allowing gluten to bond with gliadin.  This makes more air pockets possible and makes a better "crumb".  Think texture when you hear this term. Here is some good reading on the subject.

2 issues that will be separate posts later.
1st - Whole grains versus white flour. - For now, suffice it to say that if you are not eating bread that is made from whole grains, you are essentially eating sugar.  Flour is made from seeds.  The part of the seed that is retained in white flour is the endosperm which is basically the sugar that feeds the young plant.  The bran and germ are removed because that will go rancid after 6 months.  In order for flour to be a commodity, it needs to never go rancid which white flour doesn't for years.  More later but for now, do yourself a favor and eat whole grain bread products.

2nd - The yeast that most people use comes from 2 general places.  The most common is regular active yeast.  This is made by industrial processes that result in a dried powder that is waiting dormant to be activated by water.  It is what I use most of time because I am in a bit more hurry than I would prefer.  The other is what is referred to as "starter" This is basically yeast that is present in the air your are breathing.  You get this by letting water with a starch mixed in sit out and collect microorganisms from the air.  You keep pouring out half of it and adding water until the yeast as won out over the other organisms, which it will because it is better at eating and reproducing in starch water at room temperature.  The bread made from this is what you know as sourdough.