Monday, February 9, 2009

Finally, a recipe for good sandwich bread

My main goal with all this bread baking recently has been to find a recipe for a good, solid sandwich bread.  If I can make my own bread, that is one less thing that I need to make frequent trips to the grocery for.  I know, I could buy bread in bulk and freeze it, but honestly, I'm not that crazy about thawed out bread.  It's cheaper to bake my own, too.

With my current attempt at a sour dough starter heading the same direction as the last one did, I decided to give a different bread recipe a try.  I made the Whole Wheat Bread recipe from The Joy of Cooking and it turned out pretty good.  It definitely has a dense enough texture to make a fine sandwich bread.  The taste is a little lacking, but I think next time I'll use the upper range of the honey suggested (she suggests 1/4 to 1/2 cup of honey and I used 1/4).  I think some add ins would be nice too, like flax seeds or sunflower seeds or maybe some wheat germ.  The recipe makes three loaves, which is cool because I like to make a bunch of bread at once, but it may have been a little much for my stand mixer to knead.  Yes, gasp, the happy homesteader has given up hand kneading and instead kneads her bread in a stand mixer.  Well...unless I'm mad at someone, then I knead bread.  Kneading bread by hand should be reserved for therapeutic purposes.  I'm a little nervous, though, because I heard a weird grinding sound from my mixer and I hope I didn't hurt it.  Keep your fingers crossed for my mixer.

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