Basics

It’s true that I’m a little bit of a beer snob. I have been brewing for about three or four years now, and while I don’t drink enough to make enough, I try to keep up on my local and national micro brews. Also, recently, I’ve started to make homemade bread. Not the stuff in the machine, but actual down to earth get your hands sticky and beat down some dough, bread.

The first two attempts were disastrous. I tried to make some fancy bread and they just turned our horrible. The first was a blue cheese and walnut, which was flat and smelly. I know blue cheese is smelly any way, but this was like burnt blue cheese. The second one I tried was a cinnamon raisin. Again, this turned out disastrous and I made more of a cinnamon raisin hockey puck, then bread.

Thankfully the boys aren’t sophisticated with their tastes and they loved the bread anyway. Perhaps they were just being polite, but they would always ask for more “ray-ray bread.”

It was after this second disastrous loaf that I decided to do my research and found this site, The Fresh Loaf. They have not only lessons on line for free, but great tips from someone who’s worked at a commercial as well as local bakery. His insights and tips, led me to the conclusion that I had not been or did not knead enough.

So then last weekend, I did his lesson 1 first simple loaf. All it consisted of was flour, water, yeast and salt. Can’t get more simple than that. After kneading for the right amount of time, the dough turned out exactly like he described, a smooth silky ball. It doubled in size just like it was supposed to, the other loaves didn’t. And with the second rising, I knew I would be successfully. My one problem was that I should have shaped it after the second kneading. So that after the second rising, when I put it into the oven, when it was finished, I really had a bread ball, instead of a loaf.

It was a classic French ball, and tasted just fine for my first real bread. I had achieved success. For the most part. So now, in lesson two, we’ll add some kind of sugar, while changing out the water for milk. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to that today.