Want Not, Waste Not

I’ve been wasteful with my bread lately.  Lately as in since my last nephew moved out.  I’m stuck on the idea that I need to make the big loaf of my bread machine because I am a big person, my mom is a bit fluffy as well and, well, wheat bread is good for you.  Right?  So, I’m rethinking my life and trying new ways to become healthy and then again, healthier.  So, here’s my thinking.  Instead of the two pound loaf that is impossible to cut to a normal size sandwich without loosing all the yummy crust I’m going to make 1 pound loaf.  I should be able to cut from the top down to the bottom and have normal sized slices to become a normal sized person.

I’ve considered getting a bread machine (Frankie and Charlie) as a blessing, and having the bread crest the pan was always fun to watch but baking more bread than I need is wasteful, harmful and in some ways an affront to the blessings of having a store of the needful things in your life.  We’re to gather food in, and use that food wisely not use it to amuse ourselves with.  So, from now on my recipes will be for the smaller loaves.  I will try to do the math for the larger loaves but always, always verify when it comes to math and me.  I’m a writer, not a calculator.

Update: Her Dark Materials

Dinner is done.  We had hot roast beef sandwiches on hot bread. Yum.  Mom was able to detect the extra yeast but over all she didn’t not like it.  Yea me.  The mixture of the dark grains and molasses with the juices from the beef made a very substantial, complex event for the palate.  Okay, fancy words for a simple bread, but it was good.  I’ll try it tomorrow for pb&j.

Her Dark Materials*

So, I put a roast in the slow cooker and thought about accompaniments for Sunday dinner.  I’m thinking a pear and balsamic salad with bread, but not the normal, happy, spongy bread but something heartier, something designed to sop up the juices and maybe even make a pb&j a little more interesting.

To make finding the general recipe easier in my house I took a sharpie and wrote it on the inside of the cabinet (don’t look at me like that, the wood is porous so I’ll be able to clean it off before I move out).  Instead of putting in the 2.5 cups of white wheat flour, honey and so on I did the following to give it a darker, deeper taste and texture.

Calls for/Changed

1.5 cups warm water/1.5 cups warm water

3 tbls honey/3 tbls brown sugar

1 tsp salt/1 tsp salt

none/1 tsp molasses

2.5 cups white wheat/1 cup coarse red wheat, 0.5 cup roasted red wheat, 1 cup rye

.33 cup gluten/0.5 cup gluten

1.5 baking flour/1.5 baking flour

1 tsp. breadmachine yeast/1.66 tsp. bread machine yeast

The course red wheat is the wheat my sister ground in her VitaMix Blender that I talked about in my blog a few months back called Vitamix vs. Grinders.  Though it wasn’t a total waste in grinding it the texture was more of a fine cream of wheat than the pastry flour consistency that I prefer.  But it does make good bread (and good cream of wheat), especially when you add gluten and regular flour.  The toasted red wheat and the rye flours were both pastry grade.  I added the extra gluten to off-set the gritty red wheat and the extra yeast because the red wheat I know is heavier than the white and I figured, eh, what the heck.  It’s not like it’s going to grow out of Charlie and take up the whole kitchen like in I Love Lucy. (If you don’t know the reference, shame on you.)  And if it does grow a little too big it means the top is still a little doughy, which I like.

I’ll let y’all know how it turns out and if I get adequate praise from the Alpha tester (Mom).  I’m just hoping it turns out, this has been my first experiment in a long, long time.

*Her Dark Materials is a nod toward the cover of a single volume trilogy which includes The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, not that I’m stirring up some sort of alchemists brew.

Sorry for the absense

Just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgetting you.  I have still been baking bread, just not exploring new ways of doing it.  Life has been a practice in too much yeast and not enough bowl.  My mom has gone through a bit of a challenge but is starting to get better and with that the bowl is increasing so I’m getting a bit of a breather.  I’ve been thinking about fruited breads; apple sauce, raisin and spice, other dried fruits, well, you get the picture.  Bithell Farms is asking for orders again, so I might get some of the berries and see if would be an option as well….I hope the math to figure out the moisture, say in frozen raspberries, and water isn’t too difficult…me trying to do math would be a funny post, but this space isn’t for counting my fingers, toes and those digits of the people around me.  It’s about me using all the digits and math to help me make better bread for living.  And all that entails.