homemade bread~

I'm out of bread.  Time to whip up a batch ~ and I thought I'd take you along.

In my big ol' bowl goes:

1 Cup of warm milk
(I just nuke it in the microwave for a minute) 

4 Cups of lukewarm water

2 Tblsp. sea salt
(I use sea salt now for all my cooking ~ much healthier and no dextrose added to it like the 'store brand'.... good for diabetics)

2 Tblsp. sugar
(yes sugar... diabetics can eat sugar... plus it's a must for bread making because the yeast needs sugar and salt to feed on to activate it)

4 Tblsp. melted shortening
( I used Butter Flavored Crisco this morning; cuz it's what I had in the cupboard plus I like the buttery flavor in bread ... nothing like buttering your bread before it's baked)

4 Tblsp. dry yeast

 Give it all a big swirl ... enough to get the yeast wet.

Here's what it looks like at stage 1:

Now let it rest for about 5 more minutes without stirring to let the yeast work ~  until it's nice and foamy:

Next I added 2  Cups of Rye Flour and 4 Cups of white flour ~ the dough is still very soft at this stage.  You could use just straight white flour; but rye is a lot less carbs and a LOT healthier than the white.  I like half healthy... lol.

Now the fun part!  On a heavily floured board (about 1/2 Cup flour) ... 

Plop the dough out of the bowl and onto the board and give it a good sprinkling of flour ~ another 1/2 Cup.

Gently press this flour into the dough ball by bringing up the edges to the center.  Once that is incorporated ~

Do it again ... with another 1/2 Cup of flour:

After kneading in your second heavy dusting of flour ~ it should look like this:

 

Once again ... put it back into the bowl to rise.  It's not necessary ... but I like to rinse my bowl out and give it a shot of veggie spray before putting the dough back in.  It just makes it come out easier after proofing.

Okay... time to put the bread dough to bed.  Cover it up with a kitchen cloth ... and let it rest and rise until doubled.  About 1/2 an hour.

Sweet dreams.

Time's up ~ the dough has doubled in size:

Now the fun part ~ one more time ~ plop the dough back out on to a heavily floured board for a second time:

 

Give it another 1/2 Cup sprinkling of flour. 

 Now take a sharp knife and quarter the dough into four even sized pieces.

Gently shape the pieces into a loaf and put into a well greased pan.

Don't worry if they look a little lopsided and kitty whompus ... they'll be fine.

Nap time again.  Cover the loaves and let rise until almost doubled in size.

 

Time for the oven.

Bake at 350 degrees for 36 minutes.

Breads done ~ cooling on a wire rack:

Between the waiting time of the rising dough and baking I also threw together a kettle of soup.

Ham w/ split peas, lentils, wild rice, barley, onion, celery, carrots and potatoes.

Guess what's for lunch?

~~~~~

until next time...

So it goes in my neck of the woods.

~mel