Our Homemade Bread

It occurred to me recently that I have yet to share the recipe for an item that is an absolute staple around here...our bread.

I make three loaves at a time...and that usually lasts us about a week...week and a half, or so.

Here is the basic recipe:

1 1/2 c. warm water

1/3 c. oil (I use extra virgin olive oil)

1/3 c. honey (I use raw, local honey)

2 tsp. sea salt

4 1/2 c. wheat (I use hard white wheat that I freshly mill just before-hand)

1/2 c. flax meal

1 tbsp yeast

I just typed that recipe from memory. I've been milling my wheat and making my bread for a little over 4 years now...and I'd love to know exactly how many loaves I've made now!

I began with a little bit different recipe that I originally got out of the BreadBecker's red cookbook. Their recipe said you could add an egg, but that it was optional. Hmmm...do I want to leave out an ingredient that will make it easier/cheaper to make? SURE. So I left out the egg.

AND, their recipe called for gluten and lecithin. I dutifully bought those rather obscure ingredients and used them. Then I found a recipe from another trusted source that left those two items out. Hmmmmm....could I leave them out and the bread still turn out good and taste good? YES.

So, the above recipe is what I eventually whittled it down to. And like I said, we've been using it for about 4 years now...and love it!

This basic bread recipe can be used for dinner rolls, pizza dough, hamburger/hot dog buns, cinnamon rolls...and I'm probably forgetting something...

One tip, when I say "flax meal" in the recipe, I really do mean the meal...not the whole flax seed, which looks like this:

Not to be indelicate...but the flax seed will just go right through you.

Either buy the meal (you can get it on the baking aisle at Walmart)...or take a coffee grinder (this one has never seen a coffee bean)...


...and whiz up your seeds into meal.

You can make one (2-lb.) loaf of bread with the above recipe...but what I have evolved into doing is doubling the recipe...and then splitting the resulting dough into three even blobs...that just happen to weigh about 1 lb. 10 oz. each.:

We found that we liked the height that the bread turned out to be when I broke that doubled recipe into 3 loaves (the pieces of bread aren't as tall, and we just happen to like it that way)...but to each his own...

I let my bread machines (yes, I have two...one Jas gave me 16 years ago...the other was given to me by my aunt when she heard that I'd started making bread) do the kneading and rising for me.

I let my dough rise twice in the machine, and then I take it out and finish the rest by hand.

Why don't I just let the machine do the whole thing? My machines are each at least 15 years old and have BIG square bread pans...that result in BIG square, very short loaves of bread. We don't like it like that.

So, I take the bread dough out, divide it into proper sizes for loaves...spread it out into rectangles on my floured counter...and then roll it up, like so...

...and then tuck each end under a little, like so...



And then I plop the little rolled-up doughs into my bread pans to rise a third time on my stove or counter. I use 10" bread pans, but that is a personal preference thing also.

WHen I first plop them in the pans they look like this:

And then after rising for 35-40 minutes, they look like this:


And then after they've baked for 30 minutes in my 350 degree oven, they look like this:

I wish this picture would let you smell them when they first come out and look like this - so YUMMY!

I keep one loaf out, and stick the other two in the freezer. This fresh bread is best eaten within 3 days.

AND, this fresh bread is also best eaten with a big slab of butter smoothed on it!