Our Daily (Wheat) Bread

I’m calling it with this as the house wheat bread. I’ll admit- my first loaf with this recipe version was pure disaster. Worst. Loaf. Ever. Clearly not mixed and practically a pudding on the inside. But you know what they say- it’s always darkest before the dawn. And dawn means sun rise. And our golden rise was courtesy of Prairie  Gold.

I had been playing with this whole wheat bread recipe. And I have to say I haven’t loved it. Still very dense and not a great rise. Maybe that would improve over time though. This weekend we went to HochStetler’s Country Store and I picked up a bag of Prairie Gold 100% Whole Wheat. I modified the recipe noted above to the following and it. is. lovely. Try it!

Ingredients

• 4 ¼ cups Prairie Gold 100% whole-wheat flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup scalded skim milk
• 1 cup cool tap water
• ¼ cup warmed honey
• 2 tablespoons salted butter
• 2 ¼ teaspoons yeast ( I used 1 rapid rise packet and the whole wheat rapid setting for the pictured loaf)

Instructions

1. Follow your bread machine’s directions for making a whole-wheat or whole-wheat rapid loaf depending on your yeast. I think next time I’ll change out myskim milk for buttermilk.

Our Daily Bread

It started last fall. Our friend Renee and her family started coming over more regularly and we would combine our leftovers to have a “new to us” meal. And then one time she brought fresh bread. It was a honey wheat and she noted that she had made it earlier that day. She said they had been making their own bread for a while now…in their bread-maker. I have a bread-maker. And I keep it where I keep the unused-but-not-easy-to-part-with collection of my thing…s up in the attic. Many moons ago I was on a kick of making bread and packing it with farmer’s market jams for a holiday present. I even packed up my car with baskets of this one winter to bring it back for the relatives gifts. And then I stopped. And I moved. And the machine never was unpacked again. So when she noted how easy it was the smell fantasy began. Along with a strong visual memory from my childhood of my mother pulling a pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven. I remember that they were labor intensive and a rare treat. So up I went to gather the machine and its pieces. Off Lovey went to google the maker’s recipes. And slowly we restocked our pantry so that putting together the basic loaf was as easy as setting up a coffee maker. Especially since the timer function created the ability to rise to the smell of freshly baked bread steaming up out of the chaos of the little ones clamoring for their home-day. I even went so far in my melt-up love of the machine to bring it to work this December for our office holiday party. I thought if the smell of it makes a very tired me smile, then certainly it would lend a homey atmosphere to the festivities. Unfortunately I forgot a piece of the machine and didn’t realize it till the party was only an hour away. So that time I kneaded by hand, and still got a small loaf for my efforts.

This little realization also afforded me the ability to check off two items from 2011’s resolutions. I made a pan of cinnamon rolls using the machine for the dough, and I was inspired to order a sourdough starter. Although we’ve yet to use it.Thus began the ritual of baking bread in our house. We’ve been averaging 2-3 loafs a week. The only downside to this is our house bread had been a lovely german loaf from the local bakery, and we don’t really have a need to have both on a weekly basis. I’m sure we’ll find a balance there soon.

When we joined Renee’s familyat the beach over Thanksgiving she commented that baking away from home yielded little success. Her theory was that the regular build-up of yeast in the air supported the ongoing loaves. I didn’t quite understand this until Lovely called me at work a couple of weeks ago to ask what I had done differently this time. I thought about it and responded absolutely nothing other than playing it a little fast and loose with the ingredients. His vote was for the science of my ways- less salt, more yeast yielded a larger loaf. Whether it was that or the family reunion between the current loaf’s yeast and the yeast of yester-loaves I don’t actually know. All I do know is that if it keeps rising up at this rate I’m going to start calling the bread Dino.

We’ve tried a few different varieties, a french, a honey wheat, a half-wheat. The winner far and above for it’s lovely texture and light airy warmness is our Country White (recipe taken from the manual):

1. Add liquid ingredients to pan first.

2. Add dry ingredients, except yeast next.

3. Push some of the dry up into each corner and place a 1/4 of the butter in each corner

4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and put yeast there.

5. Program for basic and medium Bread color and set timer.

For a 1.5 lb loaf:

8 oz water (80 deg)

2 3/4 cup Bread Flour

2 Tbsp dry milk

2 Tbsp Sugar

1.5 Tsp salt

2 Tbsp Butter

2 Tsp Active Dry Yeast or 1.5 Tsp Bread Machine/Fast Rise Yeast

 

 

 

 

Popovers Thyme!

Thanksgiving 2012 on Edisto Island with The Gahans

These make me so very happy. So much so that even though our kitchen is full to bursting with equipment, Lovey purchased popover pans for me. A hot, easy roll in minutes. Everyone scrambles to butter and pop them in their mouths while still fresh from the oven. Even the children. What could be better? This has become our go-to holiday dinner bread. Also with a nice Sunday roasted meal.The batter is easy enough and stores so well (and frankly I think it adds to the “pop” when it is pre-chilled), that we go through spurts where we keep extra in the fridge just in case we want some. We make them with and without the thyme. Typically with though for a couple of reasons. Many, many years ago, way back in ancient 2002 or 2003, in the land known as St. Louis Celina McGinnis shared her bounty of wild thyme that her mother had brought back from France. We still use it sparingly to this day and think of The Family McGinnis when we do. Thyme is also one of the herbs in my kitchen door herb bed that lives fairly recklessly and well today. Some years it is full and winding. Others, it seems like is on it’s last season. We purchased our original plant from a Charleston farmers market on a trip in our first Southern years, along about 2004. Unfortunately as our area was heading in to drought it didn’t live more than a couple of years. Since then I’ve replaced it and as noted it hangs on. It’s cousin, about a foot over though; the lemon thyme, oh it is fairly certain the bed was put there solely for its frolicking.

Be warned, you will be obligated to eat the 12 popovers in a single setting. They are not nearly the art they are coming from the oven, even hours later.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/dining/231mrex.html?_r=1&ref=dining

The Minimalist: The Beefless Yorkshire Pudding (December 23, 2009)

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon fresh thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried), optional.

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Drizzle a teaspoon or so of melted butter in each cup of a 12-cup muffin pan or a popover tin and put it in oven while you make batter.

2. Beat together the eggs, milk, 1 tablespoon butter, sugar and salt. Beat in the flour a little bit at a time and add thyme if using; mixture should be smooth.

3. Carefully remove muffin tin from oven and fill each cup about halfway. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking for 15 minutes more, or until popovers are puffed and browned. Do not check popovers until they have baked for a total of 30 minutes.

Remove from pan immediately and serve hot.

Yield: 12 popovers.