Tag: making bread

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Every Day

2019 Goal: Bread

I have wanted forever to make my own bread. I have a bread maker but I rarely use it. That is going to change. Hubby is starting to learn how to make bread and I am going to also.

Yes, I will use my bread maker for a lot of what we need. But I am going to make all of our rolls: hamburger, hot dog, submarine, dinner rolls, biscuits, and any other roll that we want to eat. I will make English muffin bread in place of buying English muffins.

We have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a dough hook so we can make our own dough and bake bread in the oven. I want to try all different kinds of recipes this year.

We already make our own quick breads and muffins. I have even made doughnuts. The only bread that I will buy are bagels at Panera Bread. That is because I am still trying to spend all of the gift cards that I purchased at a discount a couple of years ago. So I use those on Tuesdays when we need bagels and get a bakers dozen for $ 6.99. It takes us a long time to eat a dozen, so we freeze most of them and just take out two when we are craving one.

I will still purchase wraps because I don’t want to attempt them this year and they are cheap to buy. 

Knowing that this was going to be a goal for 2019, I have been saving bread wrappers and twist ties to use for my own homemade. I also have some bread bags from buying bagels that will give me a head start. When I freeze bread, I like to double wrap it to keep it from freezer burning.

I have stockpiled some all purpose flour and bread flour at rock bottom prices. I say some because I don’t want to keep too much on hand at once. I want it to be fresh when I use it. I have a stockpile of yeast in the freezer.

Will making our own bread save us money? I don’t know. I am sure it will save us some. I will keep track of what I am spending to make it and what it would cost me at the market.  But I am more interested in eating our bread without all of the preservatives. Have you noticed lately that loaves of bread from the grocery store last for many, many weeks before they go moldy? Then you look at the ingredients and you see all of the preservatives listed. My homemade bread will need to be frozen and used as we need it because it won’t have those preservatives. But that is a good thing. 

I do have two loaves of bread and 2 packages of English muffins in the freezer now so they will be used up. I don’t ever want to waste anything. 

Categories
Every Day

A Bread Recipe From Gayle

Gayle Binkley was nice enough to share her favorite bread recipe in the comments. But I wanted to make sure that everyone sees it. It looks so easy. I can’t wait to try it.

One-Day Sourdough Bread

1-1/2 cups bread flour
2 Tbsp. instant potatoes
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 pkg. yeast
1-1/2 cups lukewarm water
4-1/2 cups bread flour
1/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 Tsp. salt
enough lukewarm water to make a fairly stiff dough

In a large mixing bowl, mix the first 5 ingredients well and let it sit 1-1/2 hours or until doubled in size. Add remaining ingredients. Turn out on floured board. Knead 5 minutes. Put back in bowl that has been oiled. Cover and let sit for 1 hour or until doubled. Remove and make into 3 loaves. Brush top with oil. Cover. Let rise until doubled. Bake at 325 until done (about 20-25 minutes). Remove from pans. Butter top while hot.


Thanks so much Gayle for taking the time to share this with me and everyone else.

Categories
Every Day

Hubby’s Homemade Dinnner

After all the years I have cooked, I love it when Hubby decides he is going to cook a meal. He loves making me breakfast and once in a while he makes dinner. Last night was one of those nights. He asked me to look at his recipes the day before and make sure we had everything he needed. We needed bread flour because I was low. So I picked up 5 pounds on the way home from the dentist yesterday.

He made homemade tomato soup which he has been making for years. It is so good and so much better than tomato soup in a can. The pic above shows when it just started to cook. He simmered it for a while and just before we ate, he added leftover elbow macaroni from a prior meal this week. It was so delicious. After dinner, he bagged some up and froze it for future meals. The rest will be our lunches for the next couple of days.

Here is the soup after it cooked and the macaroni was added. The only changes that Hubby makes to the recipe is to add Italian seasoning spice and leave out the leeks which he does not like. 

Hubby decided that he would make homemade Ciabatta Bread to go with it. He made it by hand. He made two separate loaves on two different sheet pans. Here is one of them while it was rising. The recipe told him to lightly flour them. He did but we couldn’t figure out why. All it did was make the loaf a little flour-y. But it easily wiped off so that we could eat it. Perhaps you experienced bread makers can tell us why it said to do that.

Here is one of the loaves after it was baked and cooling. He just wiped off the flour on the outside before we ate it. He also added some rosemary to the top of the loaf before he baked it. This recipe is definitely a keeper. We loved this as you can see with our soup. 

The bread was still warm and with butter it was scrumptious. It was a very enjoyable meal made for under $1.00 per serving. We will definitely be making this once a month all winter.

Hubby was thrilled with the way his bread turned out. We ate about half a loaf so we have a loaf and a half left. I save my bread bags and twist ties for when I make bread in my bread maker. At first I thought we would freeze one loaf but on second thought I was sure that we eat it this weekend. I bet it will make great toast for our family breakfast on Sunday. 

Here is the recipe for the Ciabatta Bread . And here is the recipe for the Tomato Soup . 

I had so many doctor and dentist appointments this week that I have only had time to post twice. So I will be doing our frugal things list that I haven’t done in a while tomorrow.

Do any of you have great homemade bread recipes that you use? Would you share them with Hubby?