Home Made Bread
So, I've been making bread for more than 50 years. I can whip out a batch of dough and get it rising in less than 30 minutes. There isn't much better than warm from the oven home made bread, and the smell of it baking is beyond wonderful.
Thinking about today's grocery prices, and how a loaf of store bought bread runs somewhere between $2-$4. . . a slice of store bought bread that has so little flour in it, that it can be rolled up into a bread pill the size of a large marble, and has almost no flavor.
I looked at our latest package of unbleached Gold Medal flour from a local Amish bulk foods store, and we paid $.79/lb. A batch of home made bread takes roughly 8 cups of flour. A cup of flour is roughly 4 ounces. 4 ounces x 8 = 32, 2 pounds of flour to make 4 loaves of bread. 2 pounds of flour = $1.60 @ .79/lb, so one loaf of bread costs $.40 in flour. Add a really minimal amount of cost for yeast (I buy dried yeast in 1 a pound package at a restaurant supply store, deep freeze it and use it for decades), shortening, olive oil, salt, sugar, & milk. . . add maybe $.10 to the total $.50 cost of a loaf.
There is something so satisfying in turning what basically is a messy glop of four, and water into wonderfully tasty, beautifully aromatic loaves of bread. This is one of many cases where expensive/purchased is hugely surpassed by inexpensive/home-made.
From beginning to end it takes less than 4 hours, and most of that time is in two rises of an hour each, and roughly an hour baking time.
I fondly remember the times my mother would make bread at home. . . I have passed that treasured memory along to our children as they were growing up. I share loaves of my bread with co-workers, family, and neighbors. I encourage you start a home-made bread tradition of your own. . .
<3
Dave
Makes (4) loaves of bread.
This recipe was originally from my Grandpa Brown (My Mom’s Dad), but I have modified it over the years to be probably as much mine as his. . . but he was the originator of my bread making.
I use glass loaf pans. I don’t have any experience with cooking time, etc. for metal pans. . .
Ingredients:
3 cups hot water (hot water from the tap. No boiling or microwaving required)
1 cup milk (skim milk does fine, that’s what I usually use.
2-3 tablespoons sugar
1-2 teaspoons salt (salt is important. Do not skip salt. Salt regulates the yeast growth)
2-3 tablespoons olive oil (really any oil would probably do, but I greatly prefer olive oil)
4 cups of unbleached bread flour (I use Gold Medal better flour for bread. It is better than plain white flour)
2 teaspoons of yeast (or 1 package of yeast. The amount of yeast is not important. It will grow if you use too little)
Additional flour to make a workable dough (approx 4-5 cups. I never measure. I add slowly by hand until the dough is the right consistency). My grandpa told me, bread is always better with less flour. You want the dough still sticky, but coming away from the container. If you get it too dry, I squirt on some more olive oil, and continue kneading until it is mixed in.
Additional olive oil to coat the bottom of the dough rising container
Vegetable shortening to grease the bread pans (don’t use butter or margarine. Both contain water, which will cause sticking spots)
In a large bowl, I use a large stainless steel salad bowl, pour the hot water, milk sugar, salt, olive oil, and the 4 cups of unbleached bread flour.
Stir this with a mixing spoon until well mixed, and then add the yeast. Stir the yeast until it is well incorporated into the batter.
Add another couple of cups of flour, and additional flour until it becomes too difficult to stir with a spoon. At this point continue slowly adding flour and working it in with your hands until it becomes a workable dough.
This is something only gained by experience, but a workable dough will be kneadable. . . tacky feeling, without sticking to your hands, but never too dry.
As my grandfather told me, bread is better with too little flour in it, than with too much flour. . . . the less flour you can get by with adding, the better the bread will be. If by chance you do get the dough too dry, you can moisten it up by sprinkling a bit of olive oil or water on it, and kneading it until the moisture is distributed throughout the dough.
Yeast is a living organism. . . think of it as caring for a baby. . . It wants the same temperature range as a baby would. It likes to be cozy warm, and would tolerate being too cold better than being too hot. Too hot would burn the baby, and will kill the yeast. Too cold will greatly lengthen the rising time required.
Choose a container that can be covered somehow for the rising of the dough. I have a large Tupperware bowl, that I no longer have the lid for. That’s not a problem, as I have a cutting board that I cover the bowl with.
Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom of the rising bowl. Spread the olive oil around the sides of the bowl with your hands. Place the kneaded dough in the bottom of the bowl, and squish it down until it is flat. Flip the dough over, so that the bottom side which is covered with olive oil, is now up. This keeps the top of the dough from drying out during the rise.
Place the covered rising bowl in a warm place. I often turn the oven on for a few moments, until it just starts preheating, and then I turn the oven off. I leave the oven light on to help keep the oven warm while the dough is rising.
This first rise of the dough will take about an hour. We want the dough to just about double in size at least. It won’t hurt here if the dough over rises. . . within reason. . . too much over rising and you can smell alcohol from the yeast actually beginning to ferment. . .That isn’t good. . . I’ve made bread from over risen dough and it makes fine bread (called long rise yeast bread). . . with some unusual properties. . . It takes several times longer to toast such bread, etc. . .and the second rising takes much much longer, as the yeast has used most of the free sugar already, and I suspect it goes to digesting the flour directly. It makes very different, but wonderful bread.
When the dough has risen to double the original size, divide the dough into two equal parts, and then again divide each of these into two equal parts. The parts don’t have to be precisely divided. . . just do your best at dividing the dough up. Today I use a scale to measure the dough. I measure the whole lump of dough by putting the bowl it rises in with the dough in it, on the scale, zeroing the scale, and then lifting the dough out. I look at that number and divide by 4. Then I put each loaf pan on the scale, zero the scale, and pinch off roughly ¼ of the dough, measure it, add or subtract dough as needed, until I'm close to the target weight. Repeat with the remaining 3 lumps of dough. This helps the loaves bake more evenly if the are close to the same size.
Place each division of dough into a greased loaf pan. I use vegetable shortening to grease the pans. . . I won’t allow PAM or similar spray no-stick products anywhere near my loaf pans. . . I've found it terrible to clean off.
Put the loaf pans again in a warm place. I put them back into the warmed oven. . . I reheat the oven for a few moments if it has cooled. You want the oven to feel like a warm sunny Indiana July or August day. . . you don’t want it to feel like you’re standing too close to the campfire. . . Remember to be kind to the yeast.
This time it’s important not to let the dough over rise. The dough cannot stand too much expansion without falling. Let the dough get close to 1½ times or a bit more than its original size. You will learn this by experience. It will pop up a bit more when you turn the oven on. If you let it over rise, it will get quite large in the oven and then crash down. . . looking like a chef’s hat. . . a flat sunken top. It will taste fine. It just won’t look picture perfect. . . We’ve eaten lots of loaves of bread that wouldn’t make the cover of a baking magazine, and they taste fine.
Cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour at 350°f. Judge the doneness of the bread by the color of the crust. You want both the top and the part in the loaf pan to both be a nice golden brown color. If you thunk it with your finger like a watermelon, it should sound hollow. It will darken up in the loaf pan first. . . and the loaves by the sides of the oven will be darker than the loaves in the middle.
Shake the bread loaves out of the loaf pans and allow them to cool on a wire rack, or I turn them on their sides on my cutting board. I turn them from side to side a time or two as they cool. This allows some excess moisture to leave the bread before you put it in a closed container or plastic bag for storage.
The greatest danger in making bread is in killing the yeast with too hot ingredients or by too hot of a rising temperature. The way I have constructed the ingredient order and adding, it is virtually impossible to kill the yeast by the hot water. . . so just be careful in how hot your rising place is and you should be certain of success.
Dave
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