Homemade Bread

Hello hello- on this lovely Money Saving Monday(sorry for being a day late!)! Today my lovely topic is bread- the homemade kind.

Growing up my mother would make bread on occasion (and from what I've heard from my older siblings she made it more frequently when they were little, but over time she made it less and less), and I love homemade bread! I was the culprit that would sneak in the kitchen after a freshly baked loaf was cooling on the counter, dig a hole in the back or the bottom of the loaf and dig out as much as yummy goods from the insides as I could, while still allowing it to look like a normal fresh loaf...until someone would cut into it (maybe that's why my mom stopped making it so much, cuz she was sick of hollow loafs?).

The kneading, the aroma of the kitchen during and after of the lovely bread baking smell....mmmmm- all oh so good!

When I got on my own I started making my own personal bread, I figured it was cheaper than buying bread, so every Sunday evening or so I would make a new loaf to last me the week. Well this little habit has carried over into my married and now mommy life and I love it more and more. When I started making it in my single days I would just make regular white bread, but as the years have progressed of making it more I have made lots of different experiments to get the kind of bread that I really love today.

 About a year or so ago our church put on a self reliance fair and there was a lady that showed how to make whole wheat bread- it was so yummy I wanted to eat everything that came out of the oven that day! Luckily she handed out recipes for everyone and this is the recipe that I have been using now (with some of my own adjustments to fit our own needs). She grinds all her flour with an electric grinder- so it was a lot easier for her to do the whole thing that way, but since our grinder is a hand one- I kinda needed to make some adjustments.

 See the lovely grain mill we got for Christmas!? (ignore the big awkwardness of me being super huge and preggo :)

 After my first rounds of grinding wheat ( I was hoping it would help me get into labor, oh well :)

 My first 100% whole wheat loaves all from flour that I ground up....phew...it was the work out!

 But it was oh so yummy!!

Sorry for the random thoughts and now to get to the whole point of this post. Here is the recipe that the lady gave everyone, and then with blue words I will insert things that I have changed to fit our own family needs. As much as I would love to make it just the way the lady suggested, it would be super hard to fit in grinding all the flour required, so I do about half wheat (home ground, but doesn't have to be, I am sure store bought whole wheat flour works great too) and half white flour with about a cup and half of wheat bran to help compensate and make it still more 100% wheat like.

Whole Wheat Bread

(this recipe makes 4 loaves, one of the loaves can be used for pizza, for fry bread, for rolls- for whatever, or it also freezes well for future loaves)

6 cups hot tap water

3 table spoons yeast

2 tablespoons salt

2/3 cup oil (we do half oil, half applesauce to make it a little healthier)

2/3 raw honey (we use regular sugar since honey can be pretty pricey)

1/2 cup gluten flour (because we do half with white flour, we don't use this part)

13-15 cups of whole wheat flour (like a mentioned earlier, we do half wheat, half white, and we use about 13cups total)

(Also, like mentioned earlier- we add about 1 and half cup of wheat bran)

For addition nutrition, we add lintel or black bean flour that we ground up with the above grinder, we added about a half cup of each

Combine all the ingredients except for the flour. Stir well for about 2 mins or till blended well. Then continue stirring and adding flour slowly till it is more firm and dough like and then knead the dough for about 5 min. Let sit for about 10 minutes. Pour dough onto a oiled counter or dough mat. Cut into 4 equal pieces and shape into loaves and placed into greased loaf pans (or you can use each loaf for the different things I listed earlier). Put into a preheated 150 oven and let rise until double in bulk (about 20 min). Increase the oven temp to 350 and bake for an additional 30-40 mins or until golden brown on top and bottom of loaf. Remove bread from the pan and cool on a rack. Slice when cooled. Freezes well in an old bread bag.

And I also did some recent experiments this last week with trying to make it more nutritious. I discovered with this grinder I can grind just about any grain and I can grind rice, beans, and lentils (thanks for the brilliant idea Maria!). So for this weeks loaves I added a half a cup of black bean flour and lintel flour to give it some extra nutritiousness (yeah for lots of fiber and protein!!), and I must say, it now has hit its amazing yummy taste limit for me!! Oh so good- oh so healthy and even better- oh so saving us some good mula!

 In my begining experiements of it, I just put them in baggies as seem above

 This little guy will be a wonderful friend throughout the years!! (oh P.S. if you are curious about where we got the grinder, we bought it at a local food storage store, but their main supplies come from Basic Living. If I remember right, this grinder was about $50, and we will defineatly get its use out of it!! :)

Here is the end product from just this last week with the black beans and lintels. I couldn't taste them personally, but overall it made it taste oh so yummy! Another thing I love about this recipe is it also works really great as pizza dough, thus making the pizza a little more healith too!

Yeah for yummy homemade goodness! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day!

Until next time!....

Homemade Bagels

I don't know about you, but I love having that feeling of learning how to make something from scratch that I would have normally bought at the store. You normally buy it because you had no idea in the first place how to make it, but then you finally found out how and it ended up tasting ten times better than the store bought version, and you know it is healthier too! I absolutely love this feeling, so much!! And this probably partly what I have become such a fan of this book:

 I got this recipe book as a wedding gift, but didn't "venture" through it till recently, and now that I have browsed through it, I don't know why I haven't done it sooner, cuz I just love the recipes in here, and will prob share some more recipes that are from it. This book is full of fun ideas of how to make things from scratch, especially things you'd have in your food storage like wheat, rice, beans, etc. It is so great to have cuz it gives great ideas that I'd prob never think of making out of those basic simple supplies we've be encouraged to store.

So long story short- I love the feeling of accomplishment in making yummy healthy food, that ends up being super cheaper in the long run, and here is my first "sharing" of one of my new favorite yummy recipes: Whole wheat Bagels!
Here is the recipe straight from the book:

Whole-Wheat Bagels

1 pkg (2 and half tsp.) yeast

1 and half Cup warm Water

¼ cup brown sugar

4 and ½ whole-wheat flour

Baking Soda

Combine yeast, warm water, and sugar. Let stand 5 min. Add flour and beat with dough hook until smooth (I just used a fork), or knead on floured surface 6-7 min until smooth. Let rest 5-10 min. Meanwhile, fill a saucepan ¾ full with water. For every cup of water, add 3 tsp. Baking soda. Bring water and soda to a boil. Divide dough into 12 pieces. Shape each piece into a flattened round disk (we used a large rimmed cup as a “cookie cutter” to cut out the disk shape). Press thumbs into center and pull dough outward to make a center hole. Drop each bagel in boiling water for about 10 sec. Remove with a slotted spoon (or a fork). Place bagels on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 for 8-9 min or until browned.

Here is what ours looked like when we were done, they turned out a little smaller than what you'd get at the store, but they were oh so yummy!

 They worked great for a breakfast meal, or for a lunch/dinner meal they worked really great in making "Pizza Bagels!" as seen below:

This bagel we used our "heart" cookie cutter to get this shape, but to make into the pizza all we did was cut them in half, added tomato sauce (if you don't like the sauce to be as bland you can add Italian seasoning), cheese, and we added some chopped onions, bell peppers, and tomatoes- but you could really add what ever you want- that's the joy of making things on your own at home!

Anyway, hope you have a wonderful day! Till next time....