Makin' It From Scratch # 1 - Bread

Oatmeal Bread (Recipe Below)

Since I had so many links and recipes for a bunch of homemade things, I decided to not overwhelm people and to just feature one thing at a time. I decided to start with bread because it is a recent commitment of mine to stop buying bread. I just made a loaf yesterday and it's yummy which makes me feel confident that I can do this! I'm making my own bread for several reasons:

1. To save money
2. We have some huge buckets of wheat to grind for flour
3. I want to know exactly what's going into the bread my family and I eat
4. We don't eat a ton of bread, so it's feasible to make one loaf every few days.

This is a big goal for me because good bread has eluded me for many years until I found out a few key things:

- Kneading for 10 minutes or more really is important.
- Even if your loaf is golden brown, "sounds" hollow, and has sat in the oven for the allotted time, it doesn't mean that it's done! The most reliable gauge: taking the bread's temperature. 190ºF means your bread is really done. Remember that number. 190.
- Your recipe is everything.

If I can bake good bread, so can you! And it might take awhile to get used to homemade bread (how weird does that sound?), but I am totally excited! Okay, enough chatting, let's get down to the recipes.

100% Whole Wheat Bread

(From my good friend Clair's blog. The best homemade whole wheat bread I have seriously ever had in my life.)

For 1 loaf:

(This recipe was originally for 3 loaves. If you'd like that version, just leave a comment and let me know.)

1 & 2/3 cups warm water

1 Tbsp + 1tsp oil

1 Tbsp + 1tsp dough conditioner

2 Tbsp + 2tsp gluten

1 Tbsp + 1 tsp honey

1 tsp salt

2 cups whole wheat flour (fresh ground is best)

2 tsp yeast

2 cups whole wheat flour

Stir all the ingredients together, except for the second 2 cups of flour. Add enough of the last 2 cups of flour to make a kneadable dough. (I found I only needed about 3 1/2 cups of flour total.) Knead for 10-15 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. If you don't have a Kitchen Aid or Bosch mixer, using a bread machine to do the kneading works nicely (but take it out of the bread machine to rise and bake in the oven), but you can do it by hand too which is what I do.

Grease a bread pan well. Shape the dough into a loaf and put it into the pan. Allow to rise, covered, in a warm, draft free place until it has doubled in size - and believe me it will - about 30-45 minutes. Only do one (1) rise. This is important!! If you let the dough rise more than once or for too long it can affect the taste of the bread in a negative way. (How cool is that? Bread that only needs to rise once!)

If desired, brush the top of the loaf with some melted butter. Be careful not to bump the pan when you put it in the oven or the dough might fall. Bake at 350ºF for about 30-40 minutes.

The bread is done when the internal temperature comes to 190ºF. If you're worried about the crust getting too brown, cover the top with a sheet of aluminum foil for the last 15 minutes of baking. Allow to cool completely on a rack before slicing - unless you seriously can't wait because the smell is too tantalizing. At least allow it to cool for 15 minutes.

Yield: 1 loaf

Oatmeal Bread*
(As seen in photo above)

3 cups unbleached bread flour
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. brown sugar OR honey
2 tsp. instant yeast OR 1 packet active dry yeast**
1 1/4 cups lukewarm milk

**If you use active dry yeast, dissolve it in the warm milk before combining with the remaining ingredients.

In a large mixing bowl, or in the bowl of an electric mixer, combine all of the ingredients, mixing to form a shaggy dough. Knead dough, by hand (10 minutes) or by machine (5 minutes) till it's smooth. Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover and allow it to rest for 1 hour; it'll become quite puffy, though it may not double in bulk.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled surface, and shape it into a log. Place the log in a lightly greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, cover the pan (with lightly greased plastic wrap), and allow the dough to rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, till it's crested 1 to 2 inches over the rim of the pan.

Bake the bread in a preheated 350ºF oven for 35-40 minutes until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers 190ºF. If the bread appears to be browning too quickly, tent it with aluminum foil for the final 10 minutes of baking.

Yield: 1 loaf.

*King Arthur Flour recipe

And here I'll insert a little rant about whole wheat flour you buy at the store. Not all whole wheat flour is created equal! Cheap "whole wheat flour" = bleached white flour + wheat bran added later. More expensive whole wheat flour like King Arthur, etc. = whole wheat kernels ground into whole wheat flour. It really does make a difference, folks. The best way to tell is in the texture. Whole wheat flour, to me, feels like fine, grainy sand is mixed in with the flour.

Here are a couple links for other breads that I like:
- Plain Loaf (Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day) The recipe is in the article, which I would recommend reading. Making this bread is great fun!
- Raisin' Bread (Cold Antler Farm) I've made Jenna's white bread recipe out of her book and it was really good. If you want the plain white bread from this recipe, just omit the cinnamon, sugar & raisins. Makes 2 loaves.
- Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Bread (King Arthur Flour - where I learned about internal bread temperature - GENIUS!!) (Note: This bread stays really moist! And it is a lot different than the one I posted above.)

Good luck! I'll have another feature coming soon!

Going Back to Homemade

I'd like to become less dependent on instant food. Early this morning I was trying to think of ways I could do it. I love cooking from scratch but 2 years of being a student/wife/mom made me docile towards instant foods (where before I detested and shunned them). Not to mention instant foods never add up to the same quality or price savings as making homemade.

So here are some things that I have been using:

1. Instant oatmeal
2. Hot cocoa mix
3. Laundry soap
4. Rice-A-Roni
5. Pancake mix (only during our move - I seriously always make my pancakes from scratch, but I know there are homemade pancake mix recipes out there)
6. Bread
7. Pancake syrup (Eww. I don't even know why I eat the stuff.)
8. Cereal
9. Macaroni & Cheese
10. Tortillas

Of course, for me, the solution for most of these is replacement or making them myself. I am already using my own homemade laundry soap, I found the 100% whole wheat bread and granola recipes from heaven, and I have tried going back to my childhood by putting apple sauce or honey on my pancakes. (A solution my thrifty mom thought up since she never bought pancake syrup.) As a teenager I also thought up another solution since I so desperately wanted that maple syrup: honey with maple flavoring. It's a little intense since it's honey, but it still is really good. Now that I'm a grown up I occasionally buy real maple syrup, but dang, that stuff is expensive!

The key to satisfaction and self-sufficiency is definitely not laziness or what the media terms as "time-saving" but really taking the time to fill your life (and tummy) with good homemade things - things that you can proudly say that you made yourself and where a "Made in China" sticker is nowhere to be found. At least that is what I think.

Later, I will post the recipes for the bread, granola, laundry soap, and other mix recipes that I have. Give them a try!

New Year and a New Place

Happy New Years! I'm typing from the floor in the basement of our new place in Maryland. The moving truck isn't scheduled to come until Tuesday, and let me tell you for someone who likes to stay busy and organize stuff, this has been the longest week ever! We got here Monday and I swear I never thought Saturday would come. Being away from the internet has been good for me - especially since it was a treat to have a lot to catch up on with my favorite blogs.
Already we've gotten snow... and then rain... and now most of the snow is gone and I laugh in triumph. Rain?? In January? We're not at high altitude in the west anymore baby! Even the air smells different here. I can actually smell the coast - which is not too far away and it smells lovely. I can't wait to see the ocean again.

I wonder about this new place. Will I be able to get local cheese or milk or will we be here long enough for us to get that little house on a few acres? A new place is full of possibilities just like this new year. I've got some good goals to work toward - not to mention a new baby coming next month. It's going to be a busy, crazy, frustrating time hopefully full of joys, successes and fun. Here's to the new year and a new start in a new place!

Winter in the Rockies

I'm scared to death of winter in the Rockies. Sure they get snow, ice and slush just as much as anyone else (well the northern half of the country anyway.) Right now we're sitting pretty with about 2 inches of snow with another storm blustering its way in. I am content to stay at home or even to go out and run a few errands. But if we have to leave town I seriously reconsider if its snowing. See, what I'm afraid of is the canyons. We've got one nearby called "Sardine Canyon" - a term dubbed by the locals. I don't even know what the official name is, but its earned its nickname fairly well. Sardine Canyon doesn't necessarily have steep cliffs on either side, but it is narrow, curvy, with wide open spaces (perfect for drifting snow and forming ice) Luckily its only 7 miles long.

It is amazing that in such a short stretch from the valley and into the canyon you climb to a new elevation worthy of a different weather forecast. Seriously. It can be raining in the valley and snowing in the canyon. The highway through the canyon is especially dangerous in the winter. Imagine high roads with steep drop offs and no guard rails whatsoever with blinding snow and lots of ice, black and otherwise. The county has specially designated snowplows that run back and forth over that treacherous stretch. There have been numerous accidents over the years that have shut down the canyon completely. So much so, that they finally put in a median to keep cars from sliding over into the oncoming traffic. I dread this canyon. It's one of maybe three ways out of this valley to go south and it's the most direct. Not to mention the most terrifying.

Maybe I exaggerate out of my own paranoia. (Okay, so we don't have chains yet for our current car. That may be part of it. 4-wheel drive is small comfort.) I'd still rather be at home shoveling the huge driveway or nursing a child with the flu. I'd rather be doing almost anything else besides driving through that crazy canyon in the winter.

Photo Surprise

I am just overwhelmingly surprised! Awhile back I had a photo published in the magazine Mother Earth News. Then, in the next issue I was just as surprised to see another one of my photos! I thought, "What luck!" and was just really pleased. And then in the mail I received a package informing me that they had picked a third photo of mine. (These are all in the CU readers' photos section of the magazine.) I was totally shocked! Of course I'm flattered and pleased. It feels good to know photos you took to reflect your love of nature are appreciated by others.

The Turkey is Dead

Well, awhile back I wrote about this pair of turkeys that nonchalantly crossed a busy highway on the crosswalk and disappeared. I've seen them again. A couple of times, actually. The latest I saw both was when trying to cross the road at the treadmill factory and half block from the river. The cars honked and swerved and the turkeys finally stuck to the sidewalk until they could cross. Turkeys on a sidewalk? Seriously, these birds are suburbanized.

Anyway, today was sad. I was driving myself and my son home from an errand and turned south on that same highway with the crosswalk. There on the side of the road not a 1/4 mile from the river lay a jumble of feathers. Turkey feathers. One poor bird had finally been branded as roadkill. What a sad way to go for such a proud, carefree bird. He wasn't even a Thanksgiving dinner where there were people sitting around admiring him and enjoying and appreciating his gift of life. I suppose that's just the fate that wildlife are forced to pay for encroaching development of civilization. I hope his mate will have a better fate.

The Wandering Homestead

Well, in just about 2 months we'll be packing up and moving out east to Maryland. I'm not kidding when I call this a wandering homestead. I've moved over 25 times in my life. It's not something I like to do, but just one of those things that life throws at you - and I didn't even grow up in a military family. Luckily, skills and talents are portable, you know?

I'll admit I had a really hard time transplanting to Utah. Being born and raised in Indiana, I'm a midwestern girl through and through (though I do really like the ocean). Mountains were a totally new thing to me, especially these big, bare, dry mountains here in the Rockies. Over the years I have grown to really appreciate the beauties of the west, however alien they seemed to me at first.

I have really missed humidity and green - two things in abundance in Maryland. Where I live in Utah it's actually quite green compared to the rest of the state. When my husband and I took a trip out to Maryland for job-related stuff we were blown away. I had totally forgotten how green it actually is out there! The seemingly never ending expanse of trees and forest filled me with excitement and joy like I was coming home, but my poor husband who is used to sharp, craggy mountains and being able to see for miles in a valley was a little put out. I hope he'll learn to love it like I do. I keep reminding him that we'll be in the Appalachians! Woohoo! He wasn't too comforted. They're like little bumps compared to his western Rockies. Aaah, well. It'll be a new adventure for both of us.