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.

I Feel Like a Farm Wife (LOL!)

That up there is definitely an LOL kind of statement. 

Because the truth is that we live in a cookie cutter neighborhood (with an HOA) in a small town, on plot of land approximately the size of a postage stamp, and the only garden item we have (other than the glorious perennials that blossom every spring along the side of the house--inherited from the former green-thumbed owners, God bless ‘em!) is a small potted basil plant in the kitchen, which was gifted to me recently by my daughter-in -law Ginger.  We don’t have chickens or goats, or even a dog or a cat or a goldfish. The only “critter” we have on our property is the Bigfoot statue in our perennial garden, a nod to my late dad (because that’s what his grandkids called him, per his request!).

So it’s safe to say that a farmer’s wife I am NOT!

You can definitely see Bigfoot better in the winter!

But my husband and I have recently decided to mill our own flour and bake homemade bread (and other yummy pastry items, too) with it.  So far, I’ve made four loaves of bread and one pan of brownies with our freshly milled flour.  As my two loaves were rising today, I told my husband that this homemaking task makes me feel like a farm wife.  :)  It’s so satisfying!  It means that even if I accomplish nothing else all day, I've made bread!  All by myself!

(BTW, I mentioned our plan to start milling our own flour from wheat berries, at the end of a post here not too long ago, if you missed it and are interested.)

In other news--we also joined a co-op, and yesterday we picked up our first two gallons of raw milk.

What?!

At 65, my hubby and I have decided to eat healthier.  (Or crunchier...potato, po-tah-to.)  Our goal is to try to maintain our health without going on any daily prescription meds.  So far, so good; but at our age, we figured it might be a good idea to really ramp up our efforts so that it can hopefully stay that way.

I mean, I'm not gonna lie: my husband and I both love store-bought white breads and rolls. I sheepishly admit that we both enjoy so many fun, overly processed snack items that can be found at the grocery store. (I know you’re supposed to only shop the outer perimeter of the store and avoid the middle aisles…but the middle ones sure have a lot of hard-to-resist offerings!)  And I definitely like the look of store-bought milk better  than the raw stuff straight from Bessie, which is a little yellower in color.  (I can be squeamish about food that has a different appearance than what I'm used to.) 

HOWEVER, we’re determined to make a change in our diet!  So flour-milling and bread-baking and raw milk-drinking it is! 

Hard white wheat berries, before milling.

And the flour that is produced from those berries in no time flat, 
using this electric mill.

Bread-baking ingredients.  And Mary looking on.  (I just love my
Kitchen Madonna!)

Last Friday, I made my first two loaves, using hot water, oil, honey, lecithin, flour, yeast, and salt.  It was pretty good…maybe a tad dry and crumbly.  But okay.

I baked my favorite brownies as a Sunday treat, using soft white wheat berries to make the flour.  They were dee-licious.

Today, I baked two more loaves of bread, but this time I used butter instead of oil and I added the optional egg to the dough.  Then before I baked the loaves, I brushed the tops of them with an egg wash, which gave them a nice shiny brown crust.

And oh my, these loaves were so much better than my first ones!  I don't know if it had to do with the added egg, or with substituting butter for oil, or if possibly the hot water I used on my first batch wasn't quite hot enough.  But I think we have a winner here!  I like knowing that I can bake an eggless bread, because I have a few grandchildren who are allergic to eggs (and I'm going to experiment more with the eggless recipe to see if I can get it to turn out a little moister and fluffier).  But the loaves I made today--YUM!

To give you an idea of the difference between the first loaves I baked and the ones I made today, in the picture below that's the first try on the right and today's bread on the left.  Quite a difference in appearance, am I right?  I'm almost wondering now if the problem was that I didn't let my first batch rise long enough.  (Hopefully after a bit of experience at this, practice will make perfect and I'll feel confident that I can tell when my rising dough has doubled in size!)  

Did you want to hear about homemade bread today?  Was this post absolutely riveting?  LOL!

I'm just so tickled about all of this, and it makes me kinda wish that we did have enough land to have a chicken coop out back, so we'd have fresh eggs as well, and room to plant a vegetable garden. I think if we had gotten this bee in our bonnet many years ago, my husband and I would have jumped on the homesteading train that seems to be popular with lots of younger folks these days. I'm afraid that ship has sailed, though (or that train has left the station!).  But I do think we're going to enjoy making breads and baked goods with our vitamin- and nutrient-rich home-milled flour.  

I'll try not to write too many bread-themed posts.  But I can't promise that this is the last you'll hear about it!

One last note before I sign off: lest you think I regret that we chose our pleasant little house with no land to speak of, located in a sweet but crowded small town neighborhood, instead of a farmhouse on a couple of acres, where we could grow our own food (and maybe even milk our own cow!), nothing could be further from the truth.  We have already created so many wonderful family memories in this VA house, which is located close to so many of those whom we hold dear to our hearts and is a perfect central meeting place for our VA boys and their families.  When I look out my door, I don't see rows of vegetables reaching toward the sun, or chickens wandering about pecking in the dirt...but I often see sights like this. Grandchildren running up our front walk, excited to come to Papa and Grammy's house.

I might not be a farm wife.  But I'm a very happy Grammy.