Bread Baking – A Multi-media experience (AKA A Vanity Project)

As regular readers may recall, several days or weeks ago I indicated that I was interested in baking some bread. At the time I was stopped because we did not have enough freezer space to store the number of loaves I hoped to bake.

Shortly after I awoke this morning my mother reminded me of my relatively long standing desire to bake a few loaves of bread. As today is a holiday, the freezer is partly empty, and I did not have all that much else to do it seemed like a good time to proceed with my mission. After quickly consulting a few recipes I decided that I would try to make about 6 loaves, give or take a few handfuls of dough.

The first problem I encountered was that we had run out of milk. Fortunately, we had some powdered milk, a product with which I am not all that familiar. Eventually I was able to rope my mother into preparing the powdered milk as I was not sure how best to prepare it.

Eventually the milk was prepared and things were under way. The milk was in a large stainless steel bowl, to which I added the butter, and then placed on the stove to heat. After about a half hour I added some brown sugar. Shortly thereafter the mixture had reached an appropriate temperature and was removed from the heat source.

To this hot mixture I added cornmeal, oat meal, and ‘wheatlets.’ Approximately two cups of molasses were also added to this soupy mixture. From there I added about ten cups of flour. During this adding of dry ingredients I also added some yeast to some warm sugar water.

It was my hope that by adding these dry ingredients the mixture would be cool enough for me to add the yeast mixture without it instantly dying (a problem I have encountered in the past). Unfortunately, even with a dozen cups of flour my dough was still pretty hot and it didn’t seem to be cooling all that much by just sitting on the counter. I eventually realized that I could float the bowl in a sink full of cold water.

All the while this was transpiring my yeast was bubbling away, all the way out of my pint glass and on to the counter. As soon as this was noticed the pint glass was placed in a bowl so that they over flow would be caught so that it too could be added to the dough. This mixture kept bubbling away, gradually bubbling over and out of the glass and into the bowl.

After maybe a half an hour in the cold water bath the dough was cool enough that the yeast could be added. Soon enough the yeast was fully integrated in the doughy mixture and more flour had been added. After a few more cups of flour things were looking to be on track. Soon enough I was kneading the final cups of flour into the dough with my lard covered hands.

Once the final kneading was complete I covered the side of the bowl with lard, covered the dough, and placed it in a warmed oven. The dough stayed in the oven for about two hours, an hour or so longer than I had hoped. For some reason the dough took a very long time to rise. Maybe I had knocked some of the effectiveness out of the yeast by allowing it to bubble for so long?

Anyway, things were obviously functional and I was able to start the second round of kneading. With one quick punch I caused the dough to deflate. After a few minutes of kneading I encouraged my sister to take a turn. We then traded back and I finished off the kneading. As this final battering of the dough was occurring Kirsten was greasing up the bread pans so that they would be ready for use.



.Soon enough I started to place the dough in the bread pans to rise for the second time. It quickly became evident that I had a little more dough than I had originally expected. In the end I managed to have enough for 6 regular sized loaves and 2 small loaves. Once filled, the pans were given time to allow the dough to expand into their every crevice through the miracle of yeast.

Eventually, the bread rose once again and the dough was ready to be placed in the oven, the antepenultimate step on its journey. While in the oven, the bread continued to expand, growing into an even larger mass of goodness.

Soon enough the first batch was out of the oven and the final loaves were made to take their place.

Several hours after starting the loaves of bread eventually began to take their places on cooling racks on the counter, where the entire process started several hours earlier.

If all goes according to plan, some of this bread will be consumed today and over the next few days, while the rest of it will be stored in the freezer for long term consumption.