Baking bread at home

[Overmind One]

I should not be eating much bread. It makes me gain weight, it becomes the reason to have toast at night, have peanut butter and jelly at random times, and sometimes just...because. But that is store-bought bread. I mentioned here that I wanted to start making my own bread at home and after several failed tries, I finally succeeded:



That loaf is the 4th loaf I made. The first two were so dense they were like a brick, and when you sliced it the crumbling was extreme. The third one was better, but it was too moist inside and also too dense. What was I doing wrong? Seems that I made too many adjustments and did not EXACTLY follow instructions, and I just did not have the right recipe.The loaf in the picture is exactly like bakery bread, cause I followed the recipe! This was the winner:

http://crazedmom.com/our-favorite-homemade-sandwich-bread/

That recipe makes two loaves, but I only have one glass loaf pan and I decided to make buns with the other half of the bread dough. The one adjustment I made was subbing out one and a half cups of whole wheat flour for the bread flour.

Is it worth it to bake your own bread? HELL YEAH! It's cheap, easy and fun. You don't REALLY need a mixer or a bread machine. I have a stand mixer and a stick mixer but using those is not a good idea with bread flour. The dough literally "crawls" up the mixing paddles unless you use a dough hook which I do not have. Besides that, you can do a better job with your hand when it comes to making bread. You do need a loaf pan/dish. I used a glass one like this:

I made some AWESOME pizza with this bread recipe. Thin crust and crispy/chewy, I will never order it again from outside. You can add seasonings to your dough, do stuffed crusts, pan style, tossed...you can learn it all on YouTube

Time costs? To start from raw ingredients to baked loaf:

Measuring and mixing dry ingredients: 5 min
Proofing yeast: 10 min (can be started before mixing dry ingredients: 10 min
Mixing ingredients by hand: 10 min
Kneading dough until all flour is incorporated: 10 min
Rising time for first rise: 1 hour
Punch down and knead second time, forming loaves/crust for second rise: 10 min
Second rise: 1 hour
Bake: 45 min (in my area)

So with all the waiting and mixing and baking, we are talking 3 hours. At the end of that time you have two great loaves of homemade sandwich bread or one loaf and other products you made. I think that is worth it.

 

[shavedape]

I just discovered whole wheat white flour. It really is whole wheat flour but it's made from "white" wheat berries instead of red ones. Supposedly it's lighter in taste and color but still has all the nutrients, especially fiber which has not been altered. I'm thinking if I'm going to eat wheat flour it has to be whole grain. Regular white flour has all the nutrients and fiber stripped away from it. That's not good.

 

[Overmind One]

I just discovered whole wheat white flour. It really is whole wheat flour but it's made from "white" wheat berries instead of red ones. Supposedly it's lighter in taste and color but still has all the nutrients, especially fiber which has not been altered. I'm thinking if I'm going to eat wheat flour it has to be whole grain. Regular white flour has all the nutrients and fiber stripped away from it. That's not good.

I am gonna get some of that. White bread flour with some regular whole wheat flour was what I used because I was really getting frustrated with the wasted flour from my brick loaves . The bread you see in the picture is whole wheat. It does look lighter in color, but the taste is still mostly like regular whole wheat. The specific brand I want to get is King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour. But the bread flour made such a nice, soft fluffy bread with the slightly chewy crust that I love storebought bread for. Do you bake a lot?

 

[shavedape]

I bake in spurts, mostly for other people in my life as I have been eating less sugary baked goods for awhile now. But I've been thinking a lot about improving my digestion lately and wheat bran seems to be the only thing that works. I've tried everything from increasing my veggie intake to eating all types of fiber but nothing works the way wheat bran does. So I'm going to try baking some bread using only whole wheat white flour. I've got a poolish (pre-ferment) on the counter right now. Tomorrow I'll use it in making a big loaf of purely whole grain bread. Hopefully allowing it to "sour" overnight will give the bread some depth of flavor.

I'm also hoping that this new type of flour is good enough to make pizza dough with. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Overmind One]

I bake in spurts, mostly for other people in my life as I have been eating less sugary baked goods for awhile now. But I've been thinking a lot about improving my digestion lately and wheat bran seems to be the only thing that works. I've tried everything from increasing my veggie intake to eating all types of fiber but nothing works the way wheat bran does. So I'm going to try baking some bread using only whole wheat white flour. I've got a poolish (pre-ferment) on the counter right now. Tomorrow I'll use it in making a big loaf of purely whole grain bread. Hopefully allowing it to "sour" overnight will give the bread some depth of flavor.

I'm also hoping that this new type of flour is good enough to make pizza dough with. I'll let you know how it goes.

Yeah, that pizza dough! I never knew how easy it was to make pizza dough (and pizza sauce) I shake my head at the countless times I ordered pizza at around $20.00 a shot when now I know that an entire 21x15" cookie sheet pizza with double pepperoni, mushrooms, olives and chopped green pepper and tomato costs about $5.00 in ingredients and perhaps 2 hours from scratch to the baked pizza. And it tastes better! A cookie sheet pizza is equivalent to two mediums pizzas I usually cut mine into 8 large pieces which equal about the size of a slice and a half of a round pizza. You probably make breadsticks with the extra dough like I do.