Happy
Independence Day! I know, I know today
is only the 2nd, but my sources say that the declaration was first
signed on the 2nd of July and then a few slackers waited till the 4th
to sign or something. I got Ben to admit
yesterday that I’m a know-it-all. I
guess there are worse things.
For once, I have
found myself with more than plenty to do.
So far today, I ran, did the dishes, got dressed etc., learned a new
crochet stitch, and (drumroll, please…)
Baked bread!
Ben calculated
it (because that’s just one of those things that he does and I generally take
his word for it) and informed me that, slice for slice, it would be more
economical if we made all of our own bread rather than buying it. That might not be true if we were still buying
almost-expired store-brand bread or white bread, but there is no Wonder-bread
store in this town to supply the former and the latter…well I guess we’re both
just a little to snobbish and/or spoiled to settle for less than whole wheat
when we can help it. It helps that wheat
flour is the only kind we’ve had in the house for the last two weeks.
So I feel like I
need to preface this Cinderella story with some history: after being here just
a couple of days, I wanted to make something with the fancy mixer that Ben had
gotten me for Christmas, which we hadn’t been able to use because there just
wasn’t room for it on the countertop of our last apartment. At that time, we had only white flour,
so naturally, I made white bread. It was
a simple recipe and it turned out great – two loaves of warm, white, sugarless cake
(which is all that I snobbishly think good white bread is. It’s OK.
I’ll own up to it).
The next week,
after the ‘cake’ was gone I decided that I would stand up to my wifely duty and
make some real bread – you know, the kind that I wouldn’t feel guilty eating. I found a recipe. I followed it perfectly…and my dough
would not rise. I did my
best. I kneaded, waited, formed loaves,
baked, all the while hoping against hope that the yeast would find its true
calling – better late than never – and cause the dough to fill the expanse of
my bread pans. No such luck. I came out with three, solid, whole
wheat bricks. Each one was heavier than a shot put, I kid
you not. I immediately texted my mom to
tell her that I failed as a woman. I’m
sure she was rolling her eyes. I would
have been too if I weren’t me and weren’t in such terrible distress.
I pouted about
it for the next several days while my husband, stud that he is, snacked on and ultimately
consumed all three bricks. I’ve told him
that if he dies or is debilitated early in life from excessive brick intake, he
will know whom to blame. He doesn’t roll
his eyes at me, he just laughs.
Finally, as our
food dwindled and our monthly grocery budget expired (about a week and a half
early), I decided to (wo)man up and try it again. I found a recipe online and set to work. This time I was determined. I even closed all of my windows, risking an
overheated house during the late afternoon.
I said a little prayer and, miracle of miracles, it worked! My dough rose, my kitchen was filled with the
aroma of yeast doing its thing, and I found two lovely, wheaty loaves of bread
waiting for me in my oven, just waiting to be sliced and buttered.
My only problem
with them was that they were kind of dense.
They tasted fine, but as they grew older, they got just a little stiff
for my taste. It reminded of me of my
bread machine. Ben can get it to produce
beautiful, fluffy bread, but mine is always dense and stiff and becomes more
and more cracker-like as the week wears on.
This morning,
Ben took the last two slices of that bread to work in the form of a stiff (but
not too stiff) PB&J. I decided that
it was time to make bread once again. I
was a little bit tremulous about the whole operation, seeing as how we had made
pizza on Saturday night and my dough didn’t rise. In other words, my mom and husband had both
spent a good portion of their weekends hearing about how I was once again a
failure as a woman. This time, I tried something I should have
tried each of the previous times. I
called my mom and she gave me, in addition to some just-plain good advice, the
most wonderful bread-making secret ever.
Read closely, for I will now disclose it, with permission:
The recipe, as
revised by me, now goes like this:
·
1 cup of warm water (not hot
– the first thing she told me is that I was killing my yeast by making the
water too hot)
·
2 tsp of active dry yeast
·
1 cup of milk
·
¼ cup of honey (I used ¼ cup
of sugar + about 1 Tbsp molasses because it’s what I had, but I can’t wait to
try it with honey)
·
2 Tbsp canola oil (I think
I forgot this ingredient this time around, but everything turned out great
anyway)
·
½ cup of quick oats
prepared with 1 cup of water as per instructions on the label
·
½ cup of prepared rice (<-- this is the secret
ingredient! My mom told me to use
brown rice, but being a poor newlywed I only had white around. It worked splendidly.)
·
4-5 ½ cups of whole wheat
flour (the original recipe calls for half white, half wheat. I’m offended that it claimed to be a whole
wheat recipe. Of all the nerve. =)
·
1 Tbsp salt
1.
Put your water into your
mixing bowl and sprinkle yeast on top.
Let it sit for about ten minutes in order to awaken the dormant powers
within the yeast. Add the milk,
honey/sugar/whatever, oil, salt, oatmeal, and rice. Stir to combine.
2.
Add two cups of flour and
use your mixer to stir (or combine it by hand if you’re studly like that).
3.
Add the rest of the flour about
½ -1 cup at a time until your dough is “shaggy” (original recipe’s word, not
mine). If there is liquid left over in the
bottom, let the dough stand for 20 minutes to absorb it, but there’s never been
any left over for me so far.
4.
Knead for 8-9 minutes on
floured surface.
5.
Clean out your mixing bowl,
dry, and film with oil. Place dough in
the bowl and cover it. Let rise (it will
rise!) for 1-1 ½ hours.
6.
Divide dough into two loose
balls and let sit for 10 minutes (? But that’s what the internet told me to do…)
7.
Spray two loaf pans and for
each ball into a loaf. More surface
tension on top = better for rising.
Cover and allow to rise 30-40 minutes.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees during rise.
 |
| It's rising so beautifully! |
8.
If you want to be fancy,
use a knife to cut a shallow slit or two on the top of each loaf. Place loaves in to oven and immediately
decrease heat to 375 degrees. Cook for
30-35 minutes (be careful, though. If
your oven cooks hot like mine, 25 minutes will do the trick).
It is so
fluffy. So fluffy. I had to have at least three slices
right off the bat just for joy (and because it was already 2:00 PM and I hadn’t
had lunch yet) and they were each delicious.
The original recipe told me not to cut the bread until it was completely
cooled. I think that was because they
don’t believe that anyone should enjoy bread as much as I did.
I tried to get a
good picture of the bread, but if you can’t tell what the texture is like, you’ll
just have to trust me. To my limited
experience, at least, this was a success.
*Sigh* I am so happy. Thanks Mom.
