Share your Bread recipes!

Cafe Society
1

While I was home visiting last month, my mom had me make bread a few times. I’d never made bread before. It was pretty damned cool, let me tell you! I used Mom’s mom’s recipe, which is as follows:

Ummie’s Bread

7 cups of really hot water (tap, not heated)
7 tablespoons lard/shortening
7 teaspoons salt
7 tablespoons white sugar
Mix 'em together 'til the shortening has melted.

Add a couple of cups of flour, mix together. Add proofed yeast (one heaping tablespoon in about a half a cup of warm water with about a tablespoon of sugar- it’s ready if it’s doubled in size and all foamy). Add a ton more flour, until you’ve made a soft, non-sticky, elastic dough. That’s a lotta flour needed, so make sure you’ve got a ton on hand. About 5 pounds or so. Keep it open and on hand to add in as needed. You’ll have to knead it in at the end - I do this on a floured surface.

Let the dough sit in a warm place, covered with a tea towel to keep out gerbits, until it doubles in size. Punch it down, and let it rise again. Each rise will take about an hour and a half. No, I’m not kidding. Then when it’s risen a second time, make loaves. This recipe is for 7 loaves. Let the loaves rise in their pans until they’re all big and poofy (I don’t think it’ll take nearly as long as the other rises). Then, bake at 350F until they’re golden brown on top. When you pull them out of the oven, butter the tops of the loaves. Mom always did this by rubbing the paper the butter comes in over the top. You can skip this if you like.

You can make this for as many loaves as you like. 7 is my mom’s default, because she has 7 loaf pans. Well, not anymore - she sent me home with 5 of them. 5 cups of water, 5 tablespoons of lard, etc for 5 loaves.

Use whatever flour you have handy. If you want white bread, use white flour. If you want whole wheat, use whole wheat flour. It won’t rise as well if you use all whole wheat, so Mom always uses about 60% whole wheat and the rest white. I like to add a little honey (maybe a couple of tablespoons or so) in there as well.

There is nothing better than homemade bread just fresh out of the oven, cut while it’s still hot and steamy. Even better if you have homemade jam to put on it!

2

Let me add - I am a fan of many-grained breads. 12-grain is my favourite. Can anyone help me out with a recipe?

3

Ginger, it looks as if you need some help attracting attention to your thread. While I don’t have a recipe for 12-grain bread, I’ll share my own experiences as a recent convert to homemade bread, and maybe your thread will find new viewers once it resurfaces on page 1.

A couple weeks ago I bought some Arrowhead Mills whole wheat flour and tried the recipe on the back of the package. This recipe called for just one rise, so I didn’t grow impatient waiting for the moment when I could put the dough in the oven. After 50 minutes of baking, the loaf had risen appreciably, and it made a delicious bread for later use in sandwiches.

Yesterday I tried a different recipe from the back of a King Arthur flour package. This recipe resembled your mom’s recipe more closely, and it too called for two rises of at least an hour each. The air conditioner in my house had broken down just that morning, so the kitchen was already pretty hot even without the oven preheating. In my impatience I decided to put the dough in the oven without waiting the full hour for each rise, thinking that an unusually hot kitchen would compensate for the shorter time I allowed the dough to sit on the counter. Unfortunately the loaf I obtained was much smaller than desired, and the texture is not quite what I remember from my experience with the Arrowhead Mills recipe. I might try your mom’s recipe next, when I restock my supply of white flour and get a working air conditioner to discourage me from making rash assumptions about the time needed for each rise.

4

I finally broke down and started using a bread machine that was a Christmas gift. I found plenty of tasty bread recipes here.

5

Oh, dear. I’ve been baking bread for about six years, and I have stubbornly never followed a recipe except for danish pastry. One of the very best things I’ve made up is Chocolate Cinnamon Buns. Use your basic bread recipe, but add an egg.

Mix together in roughly equal proportions, say 3/4 cup:
melted butter
brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
half a cup warm water
(you can double the syrup if you like really sticky cinnamon buns)

In a different bowl, mix together:
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
Nuke them for a minute and a half, and then stir. Repeat until the chips are melty.

Get out a large, deep (at least3 inches) pan.When the dough had finished its second rise, roll it out into a big square. Spread it with the chocolate, and then gob the cinnamon butter mix all over. Roll it up, and cut into 1 1/2 inch slices, and plop them in the pan. Let it all rise until it’s double, or the dough feels like soft marshmallow. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

Eat, praising all the deities.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my MIL gave me a KitchenAid stand mixer for Christmas. Since Christmas, I’ve run through more than 100 pounds of flour. It’s really good for very sticky doughs. I usually work by proportion- more water means a softer, more open-textured bread, more flour means a drier one with smaller holes. Butter and eggs make softer bread. Longer kneading means better gluten, which mostly means better rise.

It’s fun. Playing with play-dough that you get to eat.

I recommend The Bread Bible, by Rose Levy Berenbaum. She’s got awesome instructions, and her recipes are probably good, too. :wink:

6

For my birthday, I got a book called “Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History” by H.E. Jacob. While it doesn’t have any recipes in it, it’s a fascinating read and spans six thousand years of bread history, beginning with the Egyptians. Very cool, if you’re a dork like me.

7

Oooh! I love food histories.

I am currently making egg bread. I think the proportions are:

5 c. flour
2 c. water
2 eggs
1 tbs salt
4 tbs sugar
1/4 c butter
1 1/2 tsp yeast

Start the yeast off with a little of the sugar, in 1 cup warm water. mix everything together (mix flour and salt together before adding liquids). Knead until you have a not-too-sticky dough. Let rise and punch down twice. Shape the loaves, and let them rise until almost doubled. Bake at 350 for 20-35 minutes.

I’ll let you know how it goes when I’ve finished.

8

By egg bread, do you mean challah? I love challah. Love love love.

9

I have an oatmeal bread recipe that I tinker with to make it multi-grain. Here’s the basic recipe, with variations noted below:

3 cups water
3 cups rolled oats
1 tablespoon salt
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons shortening
2 packages active dry yeast (about 5 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon white sugar
1/4 cup warm water
6 1/2 cups flour

In a large saucepan, heat the water, oatmeal and salt until it bubbles. Add the brown sugar and shortening; stir until melted. Remove from heat and let cool until lukewarm.

In a small bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the yeast with the oats and 2 cups flour. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled.

Punch down, divide in half and form two loaves, place in greased pans. Allow to double again. Bake at 350.

Variations:

  • 1 1/2 cups oats, 1 1/2 cups barley. Cook these separately – the barley takes a lot longer to soften.

  • Replace 2 cups of the flour with whole wheat, rye or barley flour.

  • Add any of the following to the cooled oats: wheat germ, oat bran, sesame seeds, flax seeds, poppy seeds, ground walnuts or ground hazelnuts. I use about 2 tablespoons of each, typically adding no more than three things.

  • Use molasses or honey instead of brown sugar

  • Cook the oats in beer instead of water
    Enjoy!

10

It’s challah-ish. Or I think it will be. It’s my basic egg bread recipe. I don’t eat challah often enough to compare.

Mmm, oatmeal bread.

11

Well, I had planned to make bread today. However, I spoke with my Terminix guy today, and it appears that I have Indianmeal Moths. I wondered what those little wormy things were and where they came from. I won’t be making any bread until I buy flour that isn’t contaminated by bugs. I hate bugs.

12

When you buy flour or grains, throw them in the freezer for 24 hours. If there are eggs, they’ll be dead, and you won’t find out about them.

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Unless they’re black.

14

You can get black food colouring.

The egg bread turned out well.

I make naan by just doing a standard white bread recipe plus a half cup of yogurt, so you get a soft, stretchy dough. After the first rise, set your oven to its hottest broil setting. When it’s very hot, start stretching out pieces of naan- thin, and about a foot by six inches, but whatever you feel like is fine. Put it on a baking sheet and cook it for about a minute and a half, or until it’s brown. While it’s cooking prepare another piece. Keep going until your dough’s all gone. It works best if you have one person cooking and one stretching. Tortillas are easier with two people, too.

15

Oooooh, that’s awesome! I can’t wait to try that!

16

I bake all my own bread. I use Julia Child’s recipe for white bread:

2.5 C warm water (about 105 degrees. I have an instant read thermometer - great investment)
7 C bread flour
4 T Butter, softened
1 T sugar (I use honey for a little extra flavour)
1 T salt (I use kosher salt)
1 T yeast

In a bowl mix warm water, sweetener and yeast. I use a tupperware type plastic bowl with a lid so I can shake it up to mix it. Let sit for 5 minutes to proof the yeast. Put the rest of the water and about have the flour in a mixing bowl and combine A stand mixer is your friend. Add the rest of the flour and the yeast mixture. When the dough comes together, add the butter one tablespoon at a time. Mix again until the dough comes back together. Add more flour if the consistancy warrents it. The flour/water ratio is roughly 3-1, but humidity and other things can change it. Knead about 10 minutes with your mixer, then put it on a floured surface and knead by hand until you get the dough right. You’ll know it when you feel it, but you can do the window test and take a walnut-sized ball of dough, flatten it out and pull it until the dough has a membrane, rather than just bbreaking apart.

Rise your dough until it’s doubled. When putting the dough in the bowl (or whatever) to rise, grease the bowl and turn the dough around in it so it is coated with the grease. That way it won’t dry out. I always had a hard time figuring out when “doubling” had occurred, because bowls have flared sides and it just doesn’t tell you.Now I use Alton Brown’s trick of rising my dough in a cylindrical plastic food starage container. I put a rubberband around at the level of the dough, and another at twice that height. When the dough reaches the 2nd band, your dough has risen enough. Turn out your dough and knead it a bit to get the air bubbles out. Divide it in two. Shape into loaves and let rise again in the bread pans, covered with plastic wrap.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 35 minutes or until the internal temp of the bread is between 190-200 degrees. I use my instant read thermometer to check it. Cool on a wire rack. They say that you shouldn’t cut into it when it’s still hot, because chemical reactions are still gong on. I can’t resist warm bread with strawberry preserves.

I usually make this once a week. I bake one loaf immediately, shape the other dough into a disc and freeze it. the day before I plan on baking the second loaf I remove it from the freezer and put it in the refrigerator to thaw.

I buy my bread flour and yeast in bulk from Costco. The yeast, especially, is much cheaper than buying the little packets. I hope you try this recipe - it’s really good.

StG

17

Someone looking for challah? I do the dough in the breadmaker, bake in the oven.

Challah:1 pound loaf

2/3 cup water
2 egg yolks
2 tbsp+1 tsp oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 + 2 tbsp bread flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp dry yeast

And…
Glaze: 1 beaten egg

Add ingredients except the beaten egg to breadmaker in this order. Process on dough cycle.
At the end of the dough cycle, remove dough and separate into 3 different pieces. Form each into a round, pressing to break any air bubbles. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet, leaving room for dough to double. Cover with towel and let rise @ 20 minutes, or until doubled. If you press dough lightly with finger and mark remains, dough is ready. If it springs back, rise some more.

Preheat oven to 350deg. Roll each piece into a 18 inch rope, and braid ropes together. Tuck ends under. Place on cookie sheet, glaze with egg and let rise until doubled again. Leave oven door open to warm up kitchen. Bake challah 30 minutes or until golden and sounds hollow when bottom is tapped.

Or just do it all in breadmaker (no glaze) on white cycle.
If you want to try my Old Dead Ukranian Grandma’s recipe, you’re braver than me.I’ve never tried this one. But if you are:

Grandmas Xmas Braid Bread

2 pks fast rising yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 teaspoon sugar

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, add the sugar, mix well and set aside 10 minutes

1 quart milk
4 cups flour
6 whole eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup veg oil

Scald 1 quart milk and cool to lukewarm. In huge bowl, add flour and milk, mix well and add yeast mixture. Set aside to rise in warm place for 1 hour. Cover with a cloth. This is the sponge

Beat well eggs; add sugar, and cooking oil. When sponge has doubled, add the egg mixture and mix well. Add enough flour to make a fairly stiff yet easy to handle dough, about 8-9 cups, then knead well until smooth and blisters appear on the surface. Set aside to rise 2 hours in a warm place, lightly greased on the surface and covered with a cloth. Grease a cookie sheet. When dough has risen divide into 4 parts, and roll each part into a long rope. Take 3 of these ropes and pinch the end together, braid tightly, and lay on the pan. Roll the remaining roll into a finer roll, cut in 3 lengths, braid as before, and lay lengthwise through the center of the loaf, pinching the ends well into the bottom loaf. Set to rise for an hour, until double in size. Beat one egg with a tablespoon of milk and brush this mixture over the bread just before putting in the oven. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Preheat oven to 350 degrees bake about one and 1/2 hours

18

Oh! You know what’s really yummy to do with white bread?

After its first rising, punch down the dough and divide. Thinly slice cloves of garlic. Roll out each section of dough and line with garlic, then roll it up and shape the loaves. Allow it to rise again and bake as normal.

The garlic melts into the dough and makes it all tasty and delicious.

19

Beadalin - Oohhh…that sounds good. Maybe sprinkling shredded cheddar cheese with the garlic, and on top of the loaf.

StG

20

My GOD those sound delicious. Challah! Garlicky bread!

I’m going to use the Julia Childs recipe first, I believe.