Bakin’

July 31, 2005

Give us this day our wheaty bread. :yum: I wish I had thought to grab the camera when I first started the process, but these fews pics are still fun.


After the first rising, it’s punched down and shaped into loaves.


Thirty minutes into the second rise.


After an hour, it’s ready to bake. So pretty…


Christine tested, Mammy approved!

I think we’ve only bought commercially baked bread twice since I got my Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas last year — and that was earlier this summer when I had my surgery and couldn’t do much around the house for a week or so. Homemade is so much better, less expensive and super easy to make with this mixer. It’s really spoiled us!

I used to make it all by hand maybe once or twice a year before; it was such a chore. I can’t imagine those poor women in the olden days. They even had to mill the grain first! Gotta love these modern conveniences. :wink:

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Comments

6 Responses to “Bakin’”

  1. wil on August 1st, 2005 7:47 am

    My first wife and I baked bread every week for about 8 years. She was the more consistent baker; I was just better but more experimental and thus prone to failures. It was all by hand. We were thankful for milled flour. In fact my steel mill now grinds coffee beans exclusively. The stone mill got used for things like making specialty flours like green pea, lentil and chick pea flour, bean flours and the like. Turning out enough flour for six loaves of bread via a hand mill was something only attempted once. Then it was time to go in search of a pulley and parts to power the mill with a recycled washing machine motor and transmission…

    Except when mechanized power or water is unavailable, most milling isn’t done by hand but by animals. I have seen burros and donkeys doing that worthwhile deed in Central and South America. I’ve read that dogs were used when water power wasn’t available in China. I have watched Indian women grind corn into meal for tortillas in Mexico when times were tough and no one had the extra to pay the miller his due. When I lived there, if a village or town had much more than 20 families, it was common to find someone whose livlihood involved feeding grain onto a mill stone a little bit at a time, sweeping it into a waiting receptacle as soon as it reached the desired fineness. That is pretty much the way of the world — hand grinding is just too arduous. Only the poorest of the poor and the stupid gringos would do it manually. :wink:

  2. Me on August 1st, 2005 1:43 pm

    Mmmm, that looks delicious. :yes: From what I can see your kitchen looks warm and sunny and like someplace good to have a cup of tea.

  3. Cindy on August 1st, 2005 4:39 pm

    Ooooh I’m so impressed. I’m such a slacker-cook. I used to have a bread machine, and I didn’t even do THAT regularly. Your bread looks divine, and I bet it smells even better! :yum:

  4. George on August 1st, 2005 5:15 pm

    The image of your efforts has taken me back in time to my youth. We used to visit my Aunt in “the country” she did most things for herself including whipping her own butter. We used to get her bread fresh out the oven and slather homemade butter on it and occasionally some homemade blackberry jam.Those days will never see their like again and are sorely missed… thanks for the memories

  5. hippiechic on August 1st, 2005 11:18 pm

    OK I got that Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas too…and mine don’t make no bread!! :no: How do you do that with the mixer, please share. Beautiful bread, by the way!! -the hippie who’s sick of that stale $2/loaf bread from Wally World (the only place in town to shop)

  6. JL on August 2nd, 2005 1:10 am

    yummmmm

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