Bread Baking 101 - Step by Step

Now that you have your Bread Baking Cookbook lets go through the steps to make a regular loaf of bread.

1. Measure 1 cup of warm water in a liquid measuring cup.  See Bread Baking 101-The Facts for more information about what "temp" warm is.
2. Into the water add your packet of yeast.  If you took my advice and bought bulk yeast, measure out 2 1/4 tsp.  If you are making a sweet bread or using a sugar to help color the crust, you would add it to the water as well.
3. Allow the yeast to "proof" for 10 to 15 minutes.  The yeast should look bubbly and you should be able to smell the yeast.
4. Measure about a cup and a half of flour into a bowl.  I use my stand mixer but you can use a regular bowl and a wooden spoon.  Make a well (a hole) in the middle of the flour and add the yeast mixture.
5. Using your spoon gradually pull the flour into the yeast mixture until you have a soft paste.  Depending on the conditions that day you might need to add more flour.  
6. Cover the mixture with a damp towel, put in a warm place and let it rise.  This should take about 30 minutes.  Again the mixture will be bubbly and have a yeasty smell. 
7.  After this first rise, gradually add the rest of the flour the recipe calls for.  Remember the measurements are approximations.  The amount of flour you will use will depend on many variables.  You'll know when you have added enough flour when the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.  It can be a little sticky because you will add a little more flour during the kneading process.
8. Once you have added the flour and the dough has formed a ball it's time to knead.  A great video on the kneading process is here on You Tube.  Kneading is an important process and the video gives a good explanation on when to know you've kneaded enough.
9. After you have kneaded the dough, form it into the shape of the final loaf and put it into the well greased pan.  Cover with the damp towel and put in a warm place until it doubles in size.  You can cheat the rise time or if you're like me and your house is not warm enough, you can turn your oven to its lowest setting and when it comes to temperature turn it off and put the dough in the oven.  I always butter or oil the top of my loaf so that it doesn't stick to the towel during this step.
10. After it doubles in size it's time to bake it.  The bake time in your cookbook again will be an approximation.  You'll know when the bread is down when you tap it and it makes a hollow sound.   

Those are the steps to making a great loaf of bread.  In my real life my oven's thermostat broke so I couldn't bake a long with you but I will share some pictures another time...Happy Baking!

Bread Baking 101 -- Flour and additives

The picture to the left is my flour cabinet.  I have 100% whole wheat, spelt, cake, all-purpose, buckwheat and in a trash can in my pantry I have my industrial size bag of bread flour.  Along side my flours are two of my favorite additives, oatmeal and wheat gluten and not pictured is my newest addition, whole white wheat.

I don't expect that you will have as much or as many different flours as I do, but try a few different "flavors" and see what your family likes and then stick with it.  I will tell you that baking with 100% whole wheat is pretty difficult and so I wouldn't start with that one but one of the recipes that I will share with you is made with the whole white wheat which is missing the part that makes the regular wheat so difficult to use, but it's still 100% whole grain.

If you want to ease your family into eating whole wheat, try a recipe that has some white flour in it or go straight for the whole white wheat.  The white wheat is missing the part, the bran, that makes most brown breads slightly bitter.  Just like the whole wheat pasta, I'm not a big fan of whole wheat breads.  They are normally pretty dense for my liking but there are plenty other alternatives. 

To the right is my baking cabinet.  Obviously I do a lot of baking or I wouldn't have an entire cabinet devoted to it, but when we talk a bit more about a well stocked pantry I'll talk more about what I keep and why.

I bake a lot of cakes so that's why there are an addition two boxes of cake flour in this cabinet as well as a glass jar with the same flour in the above picture.

Things that are of interest are the dried spices and the cinnamon, the honey, maple syrup, and molasses and finally the raisins way at the top.   You can't see it but there is brown sugar hidden away next to the raisins something that I will use in one of the recipes that I will share with you this week.  

I love making my own different Italian breads so the different spices come in handy for those.  The 3 different sugars help to "color" the crust of my bread.  Honey makes a light crust, maple syrup (depending on it's real color) will make a darker crust and molasses will make a very dark crust.  Frankly I use the maple syrup and molasses in my business more then I do in my bread but those help to "flavor" your bread so they are options to try.  Not all recipes call for sugar, and unless you are making "sweet" bread then the sugar is really optional.  The sugar in a non-sweet bread is really there to help the yeast be a little more happy or more active.  If you are trying to avoid sugar then by all means don't use it.

Speaking of yeast...buy your yeast in bulk.  It's easily kept in your refrigerator in a sealed baggie or container but yeast that you buy in the little packets are sometimes pretty old and often they won't work as well.  A package of yeast is approximately 2 and 1/4 tsp so when you see a recipe call for a package of yeast and you have the bulk kind you won't have to guess how much to add.  Yeast can be temperamental because it likes to be warm but often if the water is a little to cold you will warm it up during kneading.  

Whew...tomorrow I'll share my recipes for sandwich loaf and cinnamon breakfast loaf.

Bread Baking 101 -- The Facts

There are a few things you should know about the Art of Bread Baking...

1. Baking bread is more of an art then a science.  Using machines to help is fine but you really must be able to touch/feel the bread to know what it needs.
2. Humidity and temperature matter.  If the humidity is really high then you will probably need less water and quite possibly more flour.  If it's super hot then you will probably need more water and less flour, that's why it's so important that you touch and feel the dough as you are making the bread.  Also the temperature of your kitchen is key to rise time.  You can use your oven on its lowest setting to help, but bread needs a warm dark place to rise in.  So if your house is cooler then most, you might have much longer rise times then your recipe calls for.
3. The temperature of the water that the yeast proofs is also very important.  Your water should be "warm".  Yes I could quantify that but trying to get the temp perfect would frustrate you so the way I figure out what "warm" is by using my wrist.  Basically I treat my water like I would a baby's bottle.  With the water running, I let my wrist tell me when the water is perfect. When the water is basically your body temperature then it's ready to use.  If it gets a little to hot, don't worry get the water in the measuring cup and let it sit for a moment.  Whereas water temperature is critical, as long as you don't cook, "kill", the yeast you will be ok.
4. Until you get the hang of it, how you measure the flour will be very critical.  Basically you want to spoon or scoop your flour into your measuring cup.  It shouldn't be packed into the cup, it should be loose and airy. Also even though most recipe's call for cups of flour I measure mine in half cups.  You have to pay a little more attention because of the extra counting but if you accidentally pour an entire half cup of flour into your bowl when you really only needed a 1/4 cup, it's a much easier mistake to fix then an entire cup.       
5. Once you get the hang of things you won't need a recipe but until you do, find a good book or website to help.  My favorite is the King Arthur Flour website but I learned to bake bread from my bread machine's cookbook.  So go to your local Library, check out several and find one you like, then go to your local Bookstore and purchase it.  Just don't get frustrated with the "approximations".  Like I said bread baking is an art not a science.

Ok, that's enough information for this post.  Later I'll talk about flours and other components.

Hi, I'm Abigail...I'll be your waitress this evening

About once a year I start a new blog.  For the past 15 months I have been posting in Moments With Him it served it's purposed and I will probably still continue updating it but for this year I've decided to blog about a favorite topic of mine and that is food.  But not just any food...Real Food.

Most of you probably already know who and what I am but in case you're joining us for the first time, let me introduce myself...

1. I am a single mother of 3
2. I am a vegetarian (don't judge me quite yet, I'll explain later)
3. I attend and serve regularly at my church.   
4. I've struggled with my weight
5. Do to my love affair with food, I'm pretty sure I've cheated on my spouse with a tomato one night at dinner.

Other things you should know about me is that I have a few general rules when it comes to food...

1. I rarely eat at fast food or chain restaurants.  (I'll quantify what fast food is in another post.)
2. I read labels on all packaged foods I purchase.
3. I try to stay away from High Fructose Corn Syrup
4. I try to stay away from highly processed food.  (Again, I'll quantify what that is another post.)
5. As a vegetarian, a "veg", I will occasionally eat fish if it is sustainably harvested but I will eat eggs and cheese.

I know, I know....you're saying that doesn't sound like something that people who live "Real Lives" can do, but believe me you can.  I didn't make all those changes all at once and you don't have to either.  In one of my previous blogs I coined the phrase, "Small steps lead to big victories."  That's what we will talk about in this blog, small steps that can lead to big changes in your life and especially the lives of your children.

Let me just say this...although I will try to convince you that having "Meatless Monday" is a really good idea I promise I won't push to hard for you to go completely veg but I will definitely point out that you can get protein from many other places besides meat.  That's for another time though, but until tomorrow let me leave you with these scary statistics...

1. Heart disease is the #1 killer in the US.  Often the first sign of Coronary Artery Disease is death.
2. Even though Juvenile Diabetes used to be a rarity, now 1 out of 3 kids born after 2000 will contract Diabetes in their lifetime.  In depressed socioeconomic areas that jumps to 1 out of 2.
3. It's estimated that between 16 and 33 percent of our children's generation is obese.
4. The annual cost of obesity is $100 billion. 
5. Heart disease, juvenile diabetes and obesity are almost always preventable.