Hello!!  It’s definitely been awhile since I last posted.  Now that the weather has settled down (aka it is no longer super hot), I have jumped back into bread making.  The hot weather of summer discouraged me from turning the oven on.  We’ve actually had some good rains the last few weeks of October.  This is much appreciated from Mother Nature given that we’re still in a drought.  It also benefited the new plantings we put in our front yard.

On with the bread making.

Ingredients

• 300g 100% whole wheat flour
• 295g bread flour
• 145g rice drink (“milk”)
• 300g water
• 16g salt
• 35g honey
• 8g active dry yeast
• 1/4 stick of butter cut up – half melted, half in chunks

I had made some bread the week before the above recipe with poor results.  I think I rushed the whole process.  I didn’t knead the dough long enough and also didn’t let it rise/ferment the proper amount.  This was all because I didn’t realize I had to make bread until later in the day and the one thing about bread is you can’t rush the yeast.  This bread came out much more to my liking.  This time I kneaded the dough for at least 15 minutes and could feel a big difference in how the dough formed up and became much more cohesive (I didn’t feel this with the dough the previous week).  I also allowed for more time doing stretch and folds with 45 minute rests (total of 3 of these).  As you can tell from the pictures, I was able to get a nice rise on the bread before baking.  Overall I was happy with another loaf of sandwich bread for our lunches.

And the crumb

-StewsCat