About a year and a half ago, I finally discovered what was causing issues with my stomach – it is the sugar alcohols that they put in just about every processed food. Manitol, Xylitol, Sorbitol and others that are often not even listed in the ingredients but fall under the ‘Natural Flavoring’ heading. Thank goodness for the app FIG which enables the scanning of food labels to let you know if the ingredients meet your dietary restrictions or not.
Meantime, I started making my own bread, cereal, yoghurt etc. And the bread making is SO easy – no kneading – (okay four times in the middle) – and while it takes up to six hours to make it, there’s only 20 minutes of that you actually have to do anything.
I started with a recipe from sugarspunrun.com (love the recipes on this site) and adjusted it just a little. You will need a 4 qt dutch oven or bread bowl, a warm place to rise the bread (I used the folding proofer from Brod & Taylor, one of my favorite appliances) but have used a heating pad as well (our kitchen is wide and open and thus can be drafty), bread flour (I have used all purpose flour successfully as well), salt, and instant yeast (check the date). That’s it!
3 1/2 cups bread flour
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups warm water (115F/46C)
Put the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl that will fit in / on your warming station. Place the yeast on a different side from the salt. Don’t mix.
Measure out the water but check the temperature with a thermometer and make sure it’s not less than 115F.
Pour the water into the bowl on top of where you put the yeast. Count to ten. Now mix the ingredients together. Doesn’t have to be well mixed, the dough will look ‘shaggy’. But try to incorporate most of the flour.
Let rise until doubled – about 4 hours (an hour on either side won’t hurt)
Remove from the bowl (use a spatula to scrape it out) onto a lightly floured surface and knead it about four times just to squash out any air bubbles. (Fold it over like a piece of paper, press together, rotate 90 degrees and repeat three more times). Shape it into as round a ball as you can, put it on a piece of parchment paper, and put it back to rise – another 30-60 minutes.
Meantime preheat the oven to 450F. If you’re using a bread bowl, put the bottom in the oven while heating; if using a Dutch oven, put that in while heating.
When the bread has risen again (it is now about 3/4 of the size you imagine the finished product to be) use scissors to cut an X in the top to vent the bread (called scoring the bread).
Place the bread in/on the (hot) Dutch oven / bread bowl tray, cover it, and bake 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, lower the oven temp to 350F, remove the lid, and bake another 10 minutes.
Remove the bread from the oven and let cool before slicing.
For a family of two, we get about 5-6 days from one loaf of bread. If we’re not going to be eating sandwiches or having toast, I’ll cut the loaf in half and freeze half the loaf. To keep it fresh I have found keeping it inside a gallon ziplock, the ziplock not sealed, and then the ziplock inside the bread bowl (with cover on) works best for us. Let me know if you try it!