tropit

With the new year, I've made some new resolutions. One of them is to regularly make my own bread, instead of buying it from the store. Fresh, bakery bread is now around $8 a loaf and since I don't live close to the bakery, I have to buy it whenever I'm in town, which may not be the day that they make it. It's good, but always a little stale. Most of the commercial breads in the big box stores are terrible, IMHO, and full of preservatives.

I've always liked making bread, but doing it on a constant basis is another story. I've got it down now and I'm really enjoying the process and rhythm of it all. I use a sourdough starter that I've had for over 8 years and I do everything over 2 days, so there's lots of sour taste in the bread. Sometimes I make white bread, or I change it up and make whole wheat, multi-grain, or seeded. I make 2 loaves and put one in the freezer. When we get into the second loaf, I take out the starter from the fridge to prepare for the next batch.

I'm enjoying the whole thing and the DH loves it. My biggest problem is trying not to eat it all when it first comes out of the oven. I figure that it's an exercise in discipline.

~ C

tranum

Sounds delicious ! And the savings is worth the effort. I shopped online and bought a box of 4 bread machine mixes of Limpa Rye for $20 as a treat to ourselves.

juliasb

Sounds yummy! I go through spurts where I make my own breads. When you said $8 a loaf from the bakery or local store I just about dropped. I will by bakery fresh for about $2 a loaf here. On top of that there is nothing like fresh bread right out of the oven.

Tartan

I also like making bread and unfortunately eating it. I make it occasionally but I also pick up a loaf of French or Italian bread from my grocery store that they bake and at $1 a loaf, a bargain.

Iceblossom

I used to bake weekly but don't any more. In my new low-carb life style there is very little place for bread. So sad. Our local chain (Franz) has come out with a keto friendly affordable bread that will fit in with my eating needs pretty well but I haven't tried it yet. I really miss toast and have hopes for a limited return in my future.

I used a large (huge) ceramic bowl, I warm it up with hot water dump that out and put a folded towel down in my sink and then proof my yeast in the prewarmed bowl. I do everything in the bowl, all the mixing and kneading etc. Shape it into loaves/rolls what evers. Back in my Alaskan days, I'd do the dishes in the diswasher while I started my batch and do the final proofing inside the warm dry dish washer (you do want to turn off any additional heater you have for the dry cycle). When you are done, all you have to do is wash out the bowl, no counters or anything.

Fresh bread does go stale quickly, that's because we don't typically have all those conditioners and additives. So I also plan my menu accordingly and have many ways to use the bread other than just snarfing on it as it comes out of the oven. I also used to make a big batch of sauce for each week, whether that was tomato or chicken stock or whatever and often did that at the same time as I was working on the dough.

Onebyone

I have been making our bread for years. Even when I was working full time. I have it down to a science. We love French loaf bread. Nothing is more simple to make. Flour, water, yeast, and salt. That's it. Any other ingredients added are preservatives. I've seen ingredient labels on bread that are a paragraph long for simple bread.

The key to crusty French bread is the baking pan. I invested in a the best decades ago and still using them. I keep a potato base mix going and use that when I make regular breads.

The no knead bread is good too and I make a lot of that, it impresses even me when it comes right out of the oven. LOL