How the Bread-baking is Going So Far (An Update from the Farm Wife)

First of all, if you can cook or bake without wearing an apron, and you have clothes that aren't stained beyond recognition, my hat's off to you.  It's hard to even tell in this picture (which I made my patient husband take before he headed off to the gym) just how covered with flour I am.  Flour, and who knows what else.

Anyhoo, I thought you might like a little update, after this breathtakingly interesting recent post (wherein I compared myself to a farm wife.  LOL!  I mean, really--LOL!).

I am now on my fourth round of bread-making (two loaves at a time), and I'm getting a bit more confident with each try.  We're just about to finish up the last of my third round of loaves, so I had to get baking today or we would find ourselves in the sad position of having no bread at all in the house!

The flour mill we purchased is a breeze to use.  You put in these wheat seeds (or wheat "berries," is what they're actually called), they get ground up in a matter of seconds, and you end up with a pile of nice, fluffy flour.  (Not as fluffy as your typical store-bought white all-purpose flour; but still, very fluffy.)  It's like magic!

Now that I'm a bread baker, I decided it was reasonable to treat myself to some new bread pans yesterday. I was at TJ Maxx and saw some speckled pastel-colored, non-stick beauties for $5.99 apiece, and I just had to get two of them.  I've been using glass pans, but I think I'm going to like these better.

Bread-baking is so satisfying.  I love seeing the dough rise.  You let it double in size a first time.  (To aid with the rising, I put the oven on warm and set the bowl of bread dough on top of it, and then I cover the bowl with a damp dish towel.)

After the first rise, you "punch it down," split it into two lumps and put those in the bread pans to rise again.  When the dough has doubled in size once more, the loaves are ready to bake.  I brush the tops with an egg wash before I put them in the oven.

I'm sorry if this is sort of boring for many of you (if you're even still here...).  I just find this whole process so amazing, and so incredibly fulfilling.  It feels like such a huge accomplishment to me, to be a able to take those hard little "berries" and then a few hours later see that they've morphed into two loaves of  soft, warm, delicious bread!  To use one of my daughters-in-law's favorite terms, baking bread is “life-giving" to me!

The new pans worked great--the loaves popped right out of them.  My husband and I both sampled a slice when they were still warm, right out of the oven (smothered in butter, of course).  Heaven!

Actually...I think man could technically live on this bread alone.  If he had to.