its fall! turning the oven back on. first bread in months.

yay fall! i love autumn. i have not made a loaf of bread in months and just turned a big ball of "family bread" dough into a bowl to rise. z helped. she can now say sentences like "me...cook...help?" and she did a nice job helping me dump cups of flour into the mixer until she decided to dip her fingers into the flour before dumping, spilling it all over. cant blame her for her curiosity though.

The one.

Well, I think I am going to stop trying different recipes each time I make some bread. This one worked great. Easy. Stuff I have. Tastes good. Maybe a little bit crumbly, but definetly worth trying again and possibly earns the spot as our regular family bread.
Found this surfing the infinite wonderweb. Someone named CookinMommaofThree on something called bakespace.com. It uses wheat germ, which is something that has been in my fridge for too long after buying it for a recipe I never made. Neglected until recently when I did a little e-research. Wheat germ is great! Add it to everyhing, anything, why not? I even through half a cup in with chopped pecans that we put on baked fish last week. And I used it instead of flour on the wood thing that you transfer pizza to the pizza stone so that the dough didnt stick, worked great. Anyhow, here is the wheat germ and flax bread recipe:

Honey Flax Whole Wheat Bread
1 c. warm water
4 1/2 tsp yeast (or two packages)
1 Tbl honey
1/4 c. butter
1/3 c. honey
1 1/2 Tbl salt
2 c. milk
5 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. ground flax seed
1/2 c. wheat germ
1 1/2 to 3 c. bread flour

In mixer combine water, yeast and 1 Tbl honey. Let sit while you
combine butter, honey (1/3c), and salt in a 2 cup pyrex glass measurer and microwave until butter is melted. Add milk to butter/honey mix, then add it all to the yeast in the mixer bowl. With paddle attachment mix and add 1 cup flour at a time until well mixed. Add flax and wheat germ. Switch to dough hook. Add bread flour until dough no longer sticks to side of bowl. Knead 8 min. adding flour as needed. Place in greased bowl (spin to cover top of dough). Let rise 45-hour. Punch down, divide and shape into three loaves. place into greased pans and let rise again 45-hour. Bake 350 for 35 minutes or so.
I freeze the extra loaves until we need them.

Maybe now I will write about something other than bread recipes.

**Since this post I have baked more of this and I lovelovelove it

first bread disaster

bummer. i guess its too early to think i can experiment much. what a waste of flour! its sort of bread. the dough rose, but maybe not enough? its not good. maybe i can make bread pudding?
just used wwheat recipe #1 but no egg, about 1/4 cup dry milk (didnt measure), 5 cups whole wheat and 1/2 cup bread flour. forgot the salt. dough cleaned side of bowl as it kneaded in kitchen aid but was really sticky transfering to a bowl to rise.

Whole Wheat #3

Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread (King Aurthor)
1 packet active dry yeast dissolved in 2 Tbl water
1 1/3 cups lukewarm water
1/4 vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey
3 1/2 cups KA Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 cup nonfat dried milk
1 1/4 teaspoons salt

Great big beautiful loaf. Smidge dry (because of all the extra flour I added to keep it from sticking to the bowl I bet) and not quite as delicious as recipe #1 was. Next time try mixing by hand before turning it over to kitchen aid for kneading.

Whole Wheat #2

Second attempt at whole wheat bread and raisin cinnamon bread.
A mixture of recipes and intuitive baker attempt...
(listed in order of addition, before first rise)
2 cups WWF
2 Tbl rapid yeast
1/3 cup warm water
1 cup warm milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
5 Tbl butter
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
2 more WWF cups
1+ cups bread flour

for the raisin bread I spread a raisin/br.sugar/cinnamon/some peach juice mix before rolling the dough.

notes: this recipe is pretty different from the last one. More butter, more egg. This time I made two loaves instead of 3, but they are much bigger. I used the rapid yeast as an experiment. There isnt much difference it seems. just different moment of adding it.
Taste test: pretty good. I need to knead in the raisins to avoid air bubbles in the rolling. Next recipe should use ww proportion of this recipe but less egg and honey instead of br.sugar.

Whole Wheat #1

Im going to use this as a bread recipe record keeper.

This is the first recipe I tried, and it was really really delicious. Made three loaves, mixed some raisins and cinnamon in one (not enough raisins) and put all three loaves (two sliced) in the freezer to pull out as needed. It is just as good thawed or toasted as fresh.

Traditional Wheat Bread (big fat Taste of Home cookbook)
3 1/2 - 4 cups bread flour
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 Tbl active dry yeast
1 Tbl salt
1 cup water
1 cup milk
1/2 cup honey (ran short on honey, made up with brown sugar)
3 Tbl butter
1 egg

learning to be an intuitive baker: first notes

ok, so between dissertating and zoejo and my already too often ignored hobbies of knitting and gardening, im excited about this new one: bread baking. You do not have to have lots of time for a hobby if you do not spend a lot of time at it. So, every once in a while ill try my hand at baking bread. its going to be the most awesome new skill im about to gain. i love it allready! the house smelled so very very fabulous last night with the first brown loaves. a little on the funny shaped side. but so really really delicious. so here are my first notes on my journey to become an intuitive yeast bread maker (that means, to understand the basic components of bread and then play and create and make food for family and friends).

great website and materials: king aurthur

notes: two cups liquid. six cups flour. 1Tbl each yeast sugar and salt.

add salt after first cup of flour. yeast doesnt like salt.

more to come.

bread and festivals

i know, blogging once a month is hardly blogging at all. and im not going to make up for it now. just popping my head in to make sure this thing doesnt get too dusty. some quick updates:

1. im going to start baking bread. ive always wanted to bake bread. the kind that rises that is. ive thought it was complicated. maybe it is, but i have a kitchenaid. must give it a try. my first attempt was braided bread for easter. it was gorgeous. i should have taken a picture. dagnabbit. it was delicious though a bit over cooked on the bottom. total success for attempt #1. totally easy. and my b.girl love love loves cinnamon raisin bread. so im now dedicated to making it myself. even though we always pick up wholegrain breads, its really hard to find them without hfcs and of course preservatives etc so, im giving it a shot. ill photograph future attempts.

2. Baltimore ECOfestival is all of a sudden this saturday.