Bread

One of those things I find absolutely irresistible is bread. I could eat bread and butter all the time.  I don't, but there's nothing better than good warm bread with melty butter. And maybe a little Jelly.  Plus, I like sandwiches, and I was realizing there's no good way to make cereal from scratch, aside from granola, which isn't the healthiest, so I set about making good, high fiber, healthy sandwich bread.

Here's the ingredient list.

1 ½ C lukewarm milk

¾ tbsp Yeast

1 tsp kosher salt

¼ c maple syrup

2 Tbsp oil

1 c All Purpose Flour

2 c Whole Wheat flour

1/3 C wheat germ

1/3 c rolled oats

Don't be thrown by the picture. I was making two loaves, one for me and one for a friend.   And I left the oil out of the lineup. But it made it into the actual bread. Don't worry.  

Now bread making seems intimidating to some, or so I hear. For me it's a relaxing, almost meditative process.  If I use good ingredients and do things right, the bread always comes out beautifully.  And makes my entire apartment smell awesome.

Step 1.  Proof the yeast.  Put the yeast, the maple syrup (use the good stuff people, not "pancake syrup), and the lukewarm milk in a large bowl, or in the bowl of your mixer. I did this bread by hand because-- hello! arm workout! -- but it works just fine in a mixer. You want the milk to be lukewarm but not too warm. don't want to kill the yeast.  Mix the yeast, syrup, and milk together until the yeast is involved. Leave it alone for 5-10 minutes and let the yeast bubble. if you don't get bubbles, you're using dead yeast. get fresh stuff.

Step 2.  Once you have bubbles, time to add about 3/4 of the flour (wing it), the oil, the wheat germ, and the oats.  if the mixture feels too moist, add more flour. if not, leave it.  When I was baking, it took about 2 cups more than it normally does It still turned out well in the end.  The texture you're looking for is not dry, it's slightly sticky but not tacky. 

It's kind of hard to describe the texture right. I'm sure there are bread blogs out there that do a far better job than i  do. But here's a picture of the dough, before it came together with kneading.  I turned it out onto a fairly generously floured board to knead it. I find that bread won't take a whole lot more flour than it needs to, even while kneading.   

Step3.  Knead the dough until it is smooth, elastic, consistently textured dough.  Yes, there will be bumps from the oats and wheat germs, but we're going for general consistency here.  I go by texture to tell when bread dough has been kneaded a lot, but I've made lots of bread. For less experienced bakers, use the windowpane test.  It took me maybe 10 minutes to knead by hand, but it really is quicker in a machine with a dough hook. I think I may do that with the next loaf.

Step 4.  Once the dough is kneaded, put it in an oiled bowl.  Cover the bowl with a clean, damp dishtowel and either put it in the refrigerator overnight for a slow rise or in a warm, but not hot, place for at least a couple hours. I put it out on my balcony in the hot LA sun, probably in the 80-90 degree range.  It rose beautifully.

Step 5.  Once the dough is risen, it's time to shape the loaves.  Here's the risen dough.   It had easily doubled in size and was sort of flattening out over the top of the bowl.  First, it's time to punch the dough down so that we don't get big air bubbles in our bread.  Punching risen dough down may be my favorite part of baking bread.  It's like punching into a whoopie cushion, a little.

This bread can either be shaped into boules   or made into loaves. Since I was craving sandwiches, I went the loaf route.  I used 2 beautiful loaf pans I got for my birthday a few years back, but any old loaf pan will do.  I greased the pans really well, but next time, lining them with parchment will work better. There was some stickage. Once the bread was in the pans, I left them alone to proof again, just on the counter, for 20 or 30 minutes.  During this time, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees.

Step 6. Once the bread had risen again and the oven was preheated, It was time to bake.  I just popped the bread into the oven.  The baking process takes 50 or so minutes (until a thermometer inserted into the bread hits about 195 degrees).  At about 40 minutes, I rubbed the tops in butter.  No, the butter isn't homemade, though there's an upcoming post about homemade butter and jam.  But I had an open stick of butter that needed to be used.  I don't use a ton of butter, just enough to thinly coat the top.  It makes it shinier, and, as it does with everything, makes it more delicious.

Step 7.  Now this is the absolute hardest part.  Once the bread is done, take it out of the oven.  Don't slice into it until it is cool.  Your kitchen will smell amazing, the bred will be warm, shiny, and delicious, but don't. sit on your hands. hide your bread knife. You don't want your beautiful bread to fall apart, do you?  Once the bread is easy to touch, feel free to take it out of the pan, but don't slice it till it's cool.





Step 8.  Once it's cool, go ahead and enjoy your bread. Enjoy it in sandwiches, enjoy it plain, enjoy it with butter, enjoy it with jam.  This is pretty healthy sandwich bread.  Lower calorie than the stuff in the store, and with way less weird stuff in it.