Bread Makes The Meal

It's time to go back and find some more bread recipes. Admittedly, I haven't made much bread lately: on the other hand, I never want to be short of ideas. There are a number of bread blogs and sites around, but mostly either they post relatively infrequently, like breadbasketcase , or they're large bread-related forums, like The Fresh Loaf , that can overwhelm with the sheer amount of information they present. Either drowning in or starving for new information is my fate, if I'm not careful.. My journey with bread ought to be a joyous exploration; there's certainly enough information out there to help me along. I just have to learn how to swim with the information, not drown in it. Starting tomorrow, you will (I hope) see more of this. God speed, and remember: All sorrows are less with bread .

I haven't made bread for quite a while. Largely because Nancie's food has been so good, and so plentiful, that we've been eating mostly leftovers for lunch, not sandwiches. (We have a lot of stew in the freezer; I should see how dinner rolls will go over.) So Sunday I went back and made the basic Amish White bread. I don't know what happened, but Everything Went Wrong . The bread didn't rise adequately, it started drying out, and when I tried to roll it out and roll it up into a loaf, it wouldn't stay together. Baked, it started falling apart. I don't think I've "lost my touch", but it was a very disappointing experience. The bread has a good taste, but it's very dense. I don't even have pictures; it's too annoying. Actually, dinner rolls sounds like a great idea; I can use some of the rye flour for them. Do you think I need to make the whole sourdough starter, or can I just mix the bread flour and the rye flour? God spe...

Wow. I'm definitely going back to a post a day. This is just too long to be absent. That said, I haven't made much bread (we've been pretty busy) and what I have made hasn't turned out that well; but I'll get into that tomorrow, I think. We're "packing up and closing down" the garden; I've been going over there occasionally and spading and turning over a quarter at a time. So far I've got half-way: The garden, half dug. You can see that the strawberry and the one pepper plant are still thriving. I left them up, especially since the pepper plant still has blossoms. Blossoms on the bell pepper. This is before I took off the weed-block fabric. About half the other plots in the community garden are already dug over and prepared for the winter. But a few people are still growing flowers. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I only think these are marigolds. In other goings-on, I've been reminded that we are on a migration ...

It's been a long time (almost a week!), and I was going to be showing you my newly revised recipe for Tuscan White Hearth Bread (made with water instead of milk, since we were out of milk, and with my buckwheat honey). But I think I seriously didn't bake it long enough. It was quite not done in the middle, and I think that's what made me sick for the first couple of days of this week. The last couple are a different story; but I think most of my "feeling ill" yesterday and today is mostly a second- or third-order consequence of not getting quite enough sleep—and trying to make up for that with several cups of tea. Let's just keep in mind for the future, shall we, that if a recipe calls for a pan of water to provide steam, I'll automatically bake it an extra ten minutes or so. This weekend, I plan on (a) making some kind of well-baked bread, and (b) finally finishing up the garden for the season. Oh, and celebrating our anniversary. Looking forward t...

I will have something else up later today; after all, I do plan to make bread of some sort. I just thought I would offer a few brief thoughts on my (continued, but still not complete) reading of The English Bread Book . So, here are my thoughts. The "German yeast" used in 1857 seems to be like the yeast variously called "fresh yeast", "wet yeast" or "yeast cakes" that are often available (though I personally use the dry yeast). This seems to have been only available for sale in bakeries. If you've never seen fresh yeast, here's some (actual size about 1 inch by ½ inch by ½ inch): Fresh yeast. (Image courtesy of ElinorD, via Wikimedia Commons). Since German yeast was relatively expensive and didn't last long, the yeast in common use was that which would have been used in brewing beer; and there's considerable discussion of how it can be affected by hops, gentian, and other ingredients used to flavor beer or ale; also of...

"Boughten" bread. On Sunday—though we didn't eat it until tonight. It's not that I couldn't have made it. We just haven't had a whole lot of time recently, and we picked our menu for today (meatball sandwiches) kind of hastily. So we had no bread in the house, and I happened to see this walking by the bakery department. By this evening it had started hardening (which I hadn't entirely expected), so we reheated it and split it for the sandwiches. I also got it because I thought I might like to try and imitate the loaf, if it was any good. Well, it was; but I'm debating whether to go ahead with the idea. My idea of "Country White Bread" has a bit softer crust, and something that doesn't dry out quite so quickly. Maybe with a bit more sugar to it? I have a recipe for it in Everything Bread ; maybe I'll make that on the cookie sheet rather than in the loaf pan. Just an idea. What's the difference for you between Country...