Baking bread

People have been grinding grains and making bread for eons, and yet really good bread has not come easy to me. I have been on a quest to learn how to bake that really special bread for a few months now and I am still not there! But I am getting a little closer. Today I was finally able to bake bread using only flour that we had milled ourselves. We bought our Country Living Grain Mill in January and we bought our first 50 lb. bag of whole grain at the end of January, but we just now got the mill mounted securely enough to do serious grinding. Right now it is still enough of a novelty that the kids are volunteering to help. That doesn't usually last real long!

I bought a copy of Laurel Robertson's "The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book" and have found some really good recipes in there. I have made the "yogurt bread" the last few times and have been pretty happy with the results.



Sponge ingredients:

1 tsp. active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water


3 cups whole wheat bread flour
2 tsp. salt


3 tbsp. honey
2/3 cup yogurt
1/3 cup cold water


Dissolve the yeast in the 1/4 cup warm water. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl; add the honey, yogurt, cold water, and dissolved yeast, making a stiff dough. Knead about 5 minutes, and set aside in a cool space, snugly covered to keep the dough from drying out, but with plenty of room in the container for the sponge to rise. Put in refrigerator for 10 hours.

Dough Ingredients:

1 tsp. active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water


the sponge
1/4 cup oil


3 cups whole wheat flour


Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Soften the sponge with the liquids and work in the rest of the flour measure, adjusting the consistency as required. Knead until silky, about 15 minutes.
Form the dough into a ball and place it smooth side up in the bowl. Cover and keep in a warm, draft-free place. After about an hour check to see whether the dough is ready. Gently poke your wet finger about 1/2 inch deep into the center of the dough. If the hole doesn't fill in at all or if the dough sighs, it is ready for the next step. Press flat, form into a smooth round, and let rise once more as before. The second rising will take about half as much time as the first.
Press the dough flat and divide it in two. Round it and let is rest until relaxed, then deflate and shape into loaves. Place in greased 8"x4" loaf pans and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until the dough slowly returns a gently made fingerprint. I make a long vertical cut along the top of the bread. Bake 45 minutes to an hour at 350 degrees F. I highly suggest Laurel's book, it has lots of great information in it about all of the steps involved, how it should look, etc. in addition to all of the wonderful recipes.
The two loaves that I made today will be gone by Friday!



Today I received the whole corn that I had ordered, my next adventure will be grinding corn and trying to make corn tortillas.

And of course there is the bread oven that I need Bryan to build for me.



Marie, of Edith and Marie our GOS pigs, has learned how to get out of their yard. These girls LOVE to eat and they have definite ideas about when they should be eating. Should we be running late to feed, Marie thinks it is her responsibility to round us up and let us know that everyone is hungry. We had put a latch and a bungee cord on the gate, but that didn't seem to be enough as she was out again this afternoon. We have chained the gate now, hopefully this will be enough to keep her from wandering off. I think we will be trying to get them moved out to one of the big yards in the next few days. This will give them an opportunity to meet Annie and Big Daddy through the fence before we put them all together. And hopefully with a bigger herd it will help quell her adventurous spirit.

Other than baking bread and rounding up pigs, today was filled with such glamorous jobs as going to the dump and picking up yet more grain for the pigs. We just picked up 1000 lbs. 8 days ago. We bought another 1100 pounds today, guess we'll see how long that will last. I guess that is why they call them pigs!