A Post About "The Bread Thing", By Request!

If I had to name my most favourite thing to bake, especially on a cold and snowy winter afternoon, it would be bread. I've been baking my own bread since my college days, and I'm still not bored of doing it. There's something about the ritual of breadmaking that seems to take you back to a simpler time and place, and connect you to generations of folks that came before you.

I was asked recently by an anonymous commenter to talk about my breadmaking process. (I'm afraid you called me by the wrong name, Anonymous, but I'll overlook that...:0)

Now, I firstly have to say that there are precisely 7.4 million people in the world ( or thereabouts, anyway) who make better bread than me. There are more scientific approaches, more professional presentations, more hoity-toity combinations of ingredients and more creative baking methods. But that being said, I'm not sure there's many folks who have more fun while making it than moi.. :0)

So, for what it's worth, what follows is my basic breadmaking technique, ripe for your tweaking, experimenting, and overall fun with your dough. I know everyone has a different way of doing things, but this is what works for me.

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First, get out two big bowls. Make sure they're both warm or at least room temperature. (I store my bowls in a coldroom so I have to plan ahead and get them warmed up before using.

I almost always make bread two loaves at a time, so what follows are directions for two loaves.

Start with 2.5 cups of very warm water. (Half of this amount can be soy or rice milk, warmed up.) Not lukewarm, not hot, just very warm. The temperature you might bathe a five-year old in.

Add a little sweetener to the water and stir it around. Sugar, maple syrup, honey if you use it, anything as long as it is sweet.

Add 2 1/2 to 3 teaspoons of dry yeast. Sprinkle it evenly over the surface of the water. Do not stir. Allow to sit undisturbed for about five minutes. Your yeastie-beasties should be pooping busily when you check back on it. If not, you might want to start again. You need happy pooping yeasties to make good bread.

Once the pooping is well established, you might want to add some powdered soymilk, if you have not replaced some of the water with it already. It makes for a softer crumb. Then, add some fat. Melted solid fat, like shortening, seems to give bread a better texture than liquid fat, but will also clog your arteries and kill your ass, so I consider that a sacrifice worth making. Add a few tablespoons of oil, less if you're worried about your weight, a few tablespoons more if fat is not your issue.

(Bread is actually a good place to use a good quality oil like hemp or flax, as the internal temperature of the bread does not get hot enough to destroy the beneficial Omega 6 and 3's in the oil.) Otherwise, I use olive oil.

Then, add a little salt. I add about a teaspoon. I find that bread without at least a little salt is pretty bland and insipid.

That's the basics, now is time to get funky! One thing I love about bread is that there is endless room to experiment, and even when the experiments fail, you haven't invested a lot of money in it. Also, bread that turns out just so-so can be dried and made into breadcrumbs, so nothing is wasted.

Try adding up to a cup of non-flour ingredients. I have added, in various combinations, cornmeal, bran, hot cereals, ground nuts and seeds, oats, cold breakfast cereals, ground millet, soy flour, etc. Go crazy!! I have a small coffee grinder that I use to grind up all kinds of stuff, like walnuts and pumpkin seeds and flax to throw into the mix. In fact, that's exactly what's in the bread I made last night, all kinds of ground up nuts and seeds, because I find that these are things we need to eat more of. Bread is a really painless way to sneak things like seeds into your diet.

You can also add more sweeteners, like molasses, for a richer, darker bread.

As long as you aren't planning on putting, say, peanut butter on your bread, feel free to spice it up as well! Adding Tofutti Sour Cream and chives makes for very elegant and savoury bread. Adding spices like sage, thyme, or poultry seasoning makes a bread that's great with dinner. Adding cinnamon or nutmeg makes a sweet bread that's great toasted for breakfast with just a little margarine. (Sidenote: I actually had frozen a loaf of cinnamon bread, pictured here.....

...and unfortunately forgot what it was. On a busy morning recently, I thawed this loaf out sent two slices of this with my husband's spaghetti lunch, and my daughter made a lettuce and Tofurky sandwich out of it. Neither of them were very pleased with me when lunchtime came around.)

You can also add things like diced sundried tomatoes, like these Sundried Tomato and Pesto rolls, one of my personal faves...

Once you've added your "fun stuff", start stirring in flour until you have a nice, solid un-sticky ball of dough. If you use 100% whole wheat flour, be sure to add a few tablespoons of gluten flour to the mix, as this helps the bread rise.For MOST bread that I make, I try to use half wheat, half white. I use the kneading attachment on my hand mixer for the first little while, and then do only the last little bit of kneading by hand on a well-floured board.

After you have a nice solid ball of dough, slap that sucker! It should be like spanking a baby's bottom. (Not that I condone spanking a baby, don't get me wrong....:0)

Grease up a nice big bowl with oil, rotate the dough in the bowl until the entire outside is lightly coated with oil, and cover with plastic wrap and a towel. Place the bowl in a warm place to rise. If the air in my house is cold, I warm the oven up just slightly, turn off the oven and leave the light on. The light provides just enough warmth. I find that it should take generally about an hour for the dough to rise to my satisfaction, which is about double in volume.

Now turn the dough out on a floured board or counter, and decide what you're going to do with it. For regular bread, cut the dough in half and knead each piece into a nice little loaf. Place in two greased bread pans and let rise about another forty minutes, still covered with a towel.

For a more french-type bread, cut the dough in half, use your rolling pin to roll each half into an approximate rectangle, and then roll up into a tube. Place on a greased baking stone or on a cookie sheet, preferably covered in parchment paper. Let rise, covered, for 30 or so minutes. Bake at 375 for about seventeen minutes. The bottom of the loaf should sound hollow when you tap it.

If it's rolls that you're craving, the possibilities are endless! You can fill a 9 x 13 pan with little dough balls, let them rise, and bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes. This makes a rectangular "loaf" of rolls that can then be pulled apart to eat.

Or, you can use a greased muffin tin. Just add two or three small dough balls to each section. Bake 20 minutes at 375.

For a Parkerhouse type-roll, simply roll your dough out flat and use a large round cookie cutter to make circles. Brush the top of the dough with melted margarine (and maybe garlic salt and veggie parm, heh heh) Fold over and let rise 30 minutes. Bake at 375 for about 18 minutes.

Or, why not make crescent rolls? Simply roll the dough into as close to a circle as you can, use your knife or pizza cutter to make pizza-shaped wedges, and then roll the wedges, starting with the wide end, into a crescent. Let rise until double and then bake at 375 for about 20 minutes.

After your bread or rolls come out of the oven, place them on a rack to cool. I immediately lube the loaves up a bit with a brushing of olive oil, a smear of shortening, or if I'm lazy, a quick spritz of PAM. A little grease on the outside makes for a nice soft crust after they cool and are bagged up. Until they are bagged, the crust will be nice and well, crusty.

So that's all I have to say about the subject of bread. Don't be intimidated by homemade bread, folks, get out there and get jiggy with it! Good Luck and Happy baking!

Peace!