Bread Making

The staff of life, better known as bread is one of the essentials of life. Over the years there have been many occasions when I have made my own bread. So when the snow meant that there was no bread in my village co-op, I was able to return home and make my own. I was already prepared as when the commodity prices rocketed just before the banking collapse, I restarted making my own bread.

Not least because at that time the price of a loaf of decent wholemeal went up to £1.80 in the village stores and even in the supermarkets the price went up by nearly a third to over £1.50. So when I spotted that I could buy a bag of strong wholemeal flour for 58 pence as the bag was slightly damaged, I could see that from that I could make two loves for much less than a single bought loaf. While there is a cost in time and Energy, even with both these costs it still made it financially viable.

The only additional major cost at the time was another decent bread tin. While I already had a good one from a cheaper end of the types available, the better quality ones have a wider base and you end up with a better shaped loaf. Also if you just want to make bloomers or cottage loaf style bread then you don't even need a loaf tin, you just need a baking sheet. Again the best quality you can afford. Often one of three or four pounds cost will out last by many years one of one or two pounds cost. I know this from the experience of having wasted money on cheap ones in the past, and I would rather say now that good quality equipment that you will use regularly is far better than cheap rubbish that you loath to use.

Equally, I have had my disasters with making bread, and I am happy to enable you to benefit from my mistakes. The worst one was when I put two table spoons full of salt in to a recipe instead of the two tea spoons full. The only real other aspect that you need to be aware of is not having had the bread rise sufficiently I have made this mistake myself, and found the solution unexpectedly. Following mixing a batch of dough, there was a gas leak near by. Thus the gas had to be shut off, so I could not place the dough in the warm place near the boiler to prove (allow the yeast to rise the bread dough). So I placed it in the fridge and waited until the gas reconnected. This happened the following day. Much to my amazement even in the fridge the dough had risen. And via experimentation it takes 24 hours, so even if you have not got an ideal location to prove the dough, if you allow sufficient time, you should never have a loaf that has not risen sufficiently

Just like any other type of cooking, bread making is actually very easy. When I first said to friends that I was going to try making bread for the first time, I was told that it was very difficult and that I should not even try. Having already bought the bread tin and the ingredients, I was left wondering if I had wasted my money, but the only way to really discover if this was to difficult was to give it a try. Using the recipe given below, I made the attempt and I discovered it was one of the easiest tasks I had undertaken. While it does take time for the dough to rise, the preparation and time for needing the dough was less than ten minutes. Even clearing up and washing up took no longer than it would from washing up after any other cooking. So those myths were dispelled quickly. But the real revelation was just how good freshly baked bread tasted.