Monday, January 24, 2011

Trying my hand at making bread

OK all you bakers out there...I absolutely love to bake! I have enjoyed it since I was a child, but I think an area of baking I dare darken the door to is making homemade bread. I have recently tried a recipe out of our trusty Grace Chapel cookbook for pizza crust, but essentially I have never really made my own. Pillsbury or the grocer's bakery has always been my necessity when needing a loaf of yummy bread to go with our homemade tomato soup and grilling cheese. Yes, I did say grilling cheese, not grilled cheese (I'll get to that in a minute). Well, as I am realizing my need to again go through the house and toss and throw away, I am looking at all my cooking magazines that I allow to just sit on my shelf without looking through them again after I get them. As I wrote in another post, I read them like a magazine, put them on the shelf and then forget about them. So I have decided it is time to go through them. Look at all the recipes, find some to try in each issue or it's time to recycle, give or pitch them! So as I was leafing through my December and January 2010 Taste of Home magazine I came across this recipe: Mom's Italian Bread. (http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Mom-s-Italian-Bread) What I liked about this recipe is that it only calls for 5 ingredients! Fantastic...and I happened to have ALL of them, amazing!! (Yeast, water, sugar, salt and flour, that's it!) I am not sure how it will turn out, as I am currently waiting for it to rise, but what I am excited about is that I made it myself. I didn't go to the store and spend the $2.5o or so for a loaf, when I had all the ingredients sitting in my pantry and it makes 2 loaves!! Wowsa!! So I guess I will have to let you know how it turns out!
Back to the grilling cheese...a few years ago, we embarked on a wonderful hometown discovery...we have a place close by, right in town to buy our own cheese. Blue Jacket Dairy http://www.bluejacketdairy.com/ sells their cheese at a home in town, but also at our weekly community farmer's market starting around spring through the fall. Their cheese curds are to die for and we buy mostly all kinds, but the chipotle, because it's too hot for me and for my kiddos. The first time we went they gave us a cheese tour, you must go! Try it out!! The best part of the tour was the Gretna Grilling cheese! You just put the cheese on a hot electric griddle and it toasts it on both sides for about one minute each side, or until brown, and those little squares of grilling cheese are to die for! To us it is like having grilled cheese sandwiches without the bread! WE LOVE IT! We always go to get our grilling cheese from Blue Jacket when we have our homemade tomato soup nights. I think this is one of my family's favorite meals...we have tomato soup, grilling cheese and bread! Yummo!! Kyle likes to help out with the meal and my daughter likes to participate too. I love this meal, because I already have the tomato soup canned and I just add my heavy cream and heat it. Tonight I am throwing in a twist by adding homemade bread! Today is such a cold day, this is a perfect grilling cheese-tomato soup-and-bread kinda day! Another reason that I love this meal is that it brings family unity to the table, then praying over our food to the Lord who provided it and enjoying our dinner together. I love that and I hope you enjoy a meaningful meal with your family tonight too!

3 comments:

  1. Sounds good, girl! There is a great bread book called "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" and you just make a batch of the dough and leave it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. You can use it for pizza dough (it's my favorite!), make baguettes or sourdough, etc. all with the same recipe. It's really easy and very delicious. I checked the book out from the library. You'll have to post an update with how your french bread turned out. :)

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  2. Hey Amber, I am a bit defeated, my bread never would rise, so I am thinking it would be better to use bread flour and probably newer yeast. So I will put those on my list to get at the store! And Amber, any suggestions would be great!! I am too thrilled about this book and will look to see if it is at our library, if not I will have to see if it is on amazon! Thanks Amber!

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  3. My bread did not turn out well...it tasted pretty good, but never rose...so I am blaming it on the ingredients...I bought some new bread flour and yeast and will try again, plus I am hoping to rent this book from the library for more inspiration! Thanks Amber!

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