Have you ever made one of those "amish friendship" breads that are really yummy at the end but kind of sickening while you literally feed yeast for several weeks in a plastic bag on your counter?
Well, up until this summer, that was the extent of my experience with baking bread. But as we've attempted as a family to eat more whole grains, I've been shocked with a) how many ingredients are listed in a loaf of store-bought bread and b) how difficult it is to find whole wheat and whole grain bread that doesn't have enriched something in it somewhere!
So, this summer, I asked one of my friends to teach me how to make bread. While I still buy bread at the store, its a fun treat & activity with the girls to watch the bread rise and to knead it....
There is a great tutorial online here:
http://faithfulprovisions.com/2010/08/30/how-to-make-homemade-bread/
Here's my contribution: WHITE WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR!
Did you know that white whole wheat flour is an albino form of whole wheat? It has all the great properties of whole wheat (nutrition and digestion), but is sweeter (naturally) and a lot easier to work with as a dough. We love it!
Baking homemade bread requires you are home for several hours because you have to let it rise several times. But, it isn't hard or time consuming... especially using my Kitchen Aid mixer with my dough hook attachment!
So far, I've made
2 loaves bread
3 pizza crusts
cinnamon sugar pretzels
I too have been wanting to make homemade bread. It's just so much more delicious. I had to learn how to use my kitchen Aid to make bread from and eHow video (no one here to show me how, maybe soon.) But I will say I found this recipe on Allrecipies.com that is a very nice pizza dough recipe and it does not require you to lug out your heavy Kitchen Aid. I follow the advice of one of the reviewers and only use 2 1/2 cups of flour. To make it more nutritious I use a mixture of white and wheat flour but maybe I should try your WHITE WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR. One more tip. I try to give it a little time to rise after rolling it out. then I bake it for 8 min or so before putting my toppings on. For a nice twist I make a Tostada pizza. Use refried black beans for the "sauce" then cheese bake it until the cheese is melted. Then once you take it out of the oven top it with shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes and if you want drizzle with salsa. You will probably have the eat it with a fork. Enjoy. Let me know what you think.
ReplyDeletehttp://allrecipes.com/recipe/pizza-dough-i/detail.aspx