I love the timer feature on my bread maker. I set it so the bread would be done by 5:30 this morning and then had fresh warm bread for breakfast at 6:00. I love the very top of the loaf, which is strange because I don’t and never liked the heels of store bought bread.
I talked with Karla after Relief Society yesterday about how much wheat I should put in. I told her of my idea of going to the farthest extreme since the one cup of white wheat didn’t seem to give the bread any body, though it was like cake, it wasn’t what I want in a daily kind of bread. Cake, as you can imagine, has a very short shelf life in my family. So, she suggested I try three cups instead of full on white wheat for this loaf.
The bread came out very light, not quite as wheaty looking as I had thought it would, but it wasn’t as dense as I thought it would either. I might have to break into a can of red wheat to see if I can get the color and texture I’m looking for. I’ve heard cooking with too much red wheat, or all red wheat, is equivalent to baking adobe bricks, so just enough to enhance color, texture and weight without sacrificing anything.
I’m going to hold off baking more bread until we finish this one. It seems to have enough wheat to make it “bread” in my house and not “ooooh, bread!” so, I guess you can say, the new bread smell has worn off. I also want to see if this is more wheat than my family can handle. My family has always eaten wheat, either as bread or cereal, so it’s not that our systems can’t handle it. But also in the back of my mind is the case of my friend, she loved pasta, bread, soy sauce, etc, only to find out she had developed Celiac’s (not an alien from Star Trek, I checked) which is an autoimmune reaction to gluten intolerance. See, I’m expecting Murphy to post a new law requiring now that I have a garage of wheat I won’t be able to eat it. Irrational I know, but my reality none the less.
I was blessed with two pails for my bread maker, so I’m going to mark on Gluten Free and try to make bread that my friend can eat. (It’s best to keep all things gluten away from all things not gluten…depending on the severity of their reactions) And it’s always good to have variety of breads to pull out of the pail….I just need learn how much Xanthum Gum to mix with the rice, bean, soy, and almond flours…if that’s the route I want to go with her bread. So, if anyone out there has any experiences on how they’ve made Gluten Free bread, please share.
Post again soon!
Pamela
