I wanted to channel my inner 1950’s housewife and decided I was going to bake bread–like with milk and flour and stuff.
I used this recipe and everybody in the comments made it sound so easy like even an idiot could do it…well, they finally met their match.
I made a couple of substitutions (which perhaps was my downfall) but I got these ideas from the comments section. Instead of bread flour, I only used whole wheat flour, and instead of honey, I used sugar.
I followed the instructions and kneaded the dough. Now, I’ve never “kneaded” before so I’m not really sure if I was doing it right, but I’ve watched cartoons and movies and all they seem to do is pound the bread and punch it. So I did that for about 10 minutes. Then I let it rise.
And it practically doubled in size. So I was super happy. I felt like Suzie HomeMaker–I was making bread!
Then I punched it down again and then shaped it into the loaf pan and let it rise again, but the recipe said let it rise until it tops the pan by 1 inch. After two hours it still hadn’t done that, so I let it rise overnight, but in the morning, it was even flatter than the night before!
What did I do wrong???
Well, I baked it anyway, and it still tasted decent but obviously it won’t serve very well for sandwich bread. I think I’m going to have to work out a few more kinks before I try to make bread again.
This was a fail.
Any tips for baking bread? Any good bread recipes you recommend?
10 comments
Just found your blog and was reading through the archives and wanted to make a comment about bread baking. Granted, I bake stuff all the time, but I’m new at bread as well.
I read in my Best New Recipe cookbook that if you want to use whole wheat flour, you should use a different recipe. A straight sub of whole wheat flour for bread flour will make your bread kind of tough. You can sub up to about 1/3 whole wheat for bread flour without compromising the quality of the bread, but any more than that and it’s better to find a specific whole wheat recipe.
Easier yet, check out recipes for Quick Breads which don’t use yeast. If you like cinnamon buns, these are super easy and a huge hit with my husband and friends: http://www.myfirstkitchen.net/blog/2009/5/11/buttermilk-cinnamon-rolls.html
I never thought I could make bread all from scratch till I took this Fundamentals eCourse from Gnowfglins.com: http://gnowfglins.com/ecourse/
She has awesome videos that really show you step by step how to make sourdough bread in the Fundamentals course, and now she has a huge new course all about Sourdough. I’m pretty bad at cooking, but everything I’ve tried through these ecourses has worked beautifully, and I’m convinced it’s because she’s such a great teacher. Plus, she’s into the Weston A. Price way of cooking, so this stuff is even healthier than what you can get at the store.
Oh, and best part is that you can check out her lessons for free (she does accept donations, though), so it’s super budget friendly!
For $10 I bought a bread machine from goodwill that looked brand new. Works like a charm.
I will have to check out my local Goodwill. I have actually found pretty cool stuff from there…
7l5Nf8 That’s a mold-breaker. Great tnhkiing!
We really are twins!!! I’ve never made my own bread and this is why! I just have a feeling that it wouldn’t rise….if I try it I’ll let you know how it turns out!!
Love the new blog – it’s right up my alley, being into the whole hippie-liberal-green-organic movement, as well as on a tight budget as a 25 y/o first-year teacher. The RSS feed doesn’t seem to be working, though! It might be a problem on my end, but I thought I’d let you know in case you could look into it. Cheers!
Hi Cait! I noticed the RSS feed as well! But Eric says he fixed it now so keep me posted if it still doesn’t work!
We’re still trying to figure out all the kinks now that we have our own domain! : D
thank you so much for stopping by at our new home!
Did you let the yeast dissolve all the way??? I made that mistake the first time I made dough for pizza from scratch. Maybe not knead it the second time around either???
Great new blog! I’ve updated my Read as well 🙂
Ahh! Love the new blog!! Updated my reader 🙂 XO!