Bread Making!

(Psst. CD1 is finally here!)

Would it help if I said that my breadmaking post was late because I wanted to get/add pictures? Well it's finally here, with pictures for your viewing!

Don't know if you remember, but we recently got a grain mill, and we have picked up our 50lb. bag of wheat berries that we ordered from the local men.nonite's, and we now have two 3-qt containers of freshly-milled whole wheat flour! (Mr. A grinds more as I use up the flour.)


I had been trying recipe after recipe of wheat bread, and none had worked very well. The main problem is getting the dough to rise. Which, from my goo.gling, is a common issue with wheat flour.

From what I can conclude from my past recipes versus the one that worked beautifully is that:

1. I was not preparing the yeast well. The packets say to sprinkle the yeast into a bowl of warm water and let it sit. Well that is all fine and good, but I don't think all the yeast was really getting dunked into the bath, so I don't think it was developed enough by the time I mixed it into the receipe. What worked was that I put the yeast in the bowl and the dumped the water on top of it. Worked much better!!

2. I don't think I (i.e. my mixer) was kneading the dough long enough, before. What worked was that "I" (see previous clarification) kneaded the dough for 10 minutes after it formed into a ball.

3. For a warm space for the bread to rise, I had always turned the oven on for a minute and then cut it off. What worked was that I added a shallow bowl of warm water on the lower rack- rose much better!

4. Previously, after the second rising, I would take the bread pan(s) out of the oven while it preheated for the bake phase. I think this made the bread cold, and so it would fall prior to the baking. This time, I left them in there (while the oven preheated to baking temperature) and just baked them for a shorter time. Bread stayed risen and lovely!

AND, the recipe I used this time was the wheat bread recipe from The Family Homestead (bread recipe here, but it's fun to check out all the links on her homepage!). (Note, I didn't have gluten flour, so I just used 5.5 cups of wheat flour. It tastes awesome- I don't know how it tastes with gluten flour, but I think it tastes excellent without it!). I am going to try some of my previous recipes with some of the situational observations listed above to see if it's those recipe's faults or what I was doing during the mixing. If I were to make a guess, I'd guess it's the latter!!

Here are some pictures of the finished product! If you notice, I don't have two loaf pans, so I have to use one of my oval pyr.ex dishes in addition to my loaf pan!




Happy breadmaking everyone!! Let me know how these suggestions help you!!