Can we talk about bread making?

[Marianne]

The yeast I buy is just at the little grocery store that's local. It's a small vacuum sealed bag, 2#. I tend to not get things that I have to order thru the mail, but try to buy locally instead, but that's my 'weird' thing.

The Amish starter is:
1 envelope active dried yeast (or 2-1/4 tsp. of the bulk yeast) dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water. Let stand for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a gallon freezer bag (or your glass/plastic container of choice) mix:
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup milk

Goosh it all together or stir with a wooden or plastic spoon. Add the yeast mixture and goosh again. Let it sit on your counter from then on. Check it periodically to 'burp' the bag. This would be day 1 of the usual 10 day cycle.

I usually don't use a bread machine as I don't like that dang hole in the middle of the bread. I tried using the 'dough' cycle a few times, but on mine, you can only do one large loaf at a time.

I read somewhere that depending on the cost of your electricity, one loaf of bread baked in the oven will cost $2.50. It had the cost break down of ingredients and what their electric rate was, which was slightly higher than mine. The electricity was considerably more than the ingredients. I never bake one loaf at a time, always 2 and up to 4 at a time. Same electricity used, so makes the per loaf cost cheaper. I keep washing bread wrappers to use when I bake bread. I just double bag the loaves and pop some of them in the freezer.

I don't knead on the counter any more. I use a big plastic bowl to mix everything in and just knead in the bowl. The table seems to be the right height for me so it's easier.

Oh, on the saved dough? I read that 10 ounces is a good amount to shoot for (from the oatmeal bread recipe's site) which would be around the size of a baseball, I'm guessing. I'm pretty low tech here, so no scales. So you would have to increase ingredients a bit that first time to have enough dough to save for the next batch. Then the next batch will be slightly bigger and you'll have enough to save, and so on.

AND I keep forgetting to do this! But I still have scads of yeast, too.

 

[freemotion]

I read somewhere that depending on the cost of your electricity, one loaf of bread baked in the oven will cost $2.50. It had the cost break down of ingredients and what their electric rate was, which was slightly higher than mine. The electricity was considerably more than the ingredients.

I hope that is not right! Wow! It costs me less than $0.50 for the ingredients for a loaf of bread here and I use propane for my stove.

 

[Marianne]

If you want some bread in a hurry, do a search for 'skillet bread'. There are several recipes online for that, and it's all 'baked' in a skillet on top of the stove. It's kind of like a biscuit in texture. I use bacon grease to fry it. Okay, maybe not too healthy, but yum.

I grew up with lefse. It's just leftover mashed potatoes from last nights dinner with flour mixed into it. Roll in to rounds and cook on a dry griddle. It looks like a flour tortilla, but is a little thicker and has a lot more flavor.
I remember the original recipe had you boil potatoes, add butter, salt and milk, then the flour, but we usually just used the leftovers.

And break out another pound of butter. Yum. All this talk of bread and I can almost smell it baking, although I have none in the oven.

I'm supposed to limit sodium, too. I just don't add it at the table and use a bit less at the stove. The one time I didn't add it to bread, I thought it was awful. I finally figured out that there wasn't that much in each slice (slab???) so I'm okay with what I'm doing. Your situation sure could be different, though.

 

[savingdogs]

My reaction is pretty severe so I need to stay under 2000 mg of salt per day, which isn't really so low. So I may eat bread, but not salty bread, and after trying some loaves made with little salt, I've decided that 1/4 less sodium is as far as I can go before I don't enjoy eating it.

Baking several at a time would seem like a good idea, but my oven holds two loaves max. I think making some skillet bread is an excellent idea, either on the woodstove in winter (or during a power outage!) or not heating up my house in summer turning on the stove.

I have a hard time getting my house to a warm temperature in spring as well, when the woodstove is too hot, without turning the oven on low in the kitchen so that the bread on top of the oven rises. If the room is cold, can I just expect it to rise more slowly? I had not thought about the heating cost and it needs to be factored it.

Also, if I need to take a "bread-making break" when I feel ill, could I just have someone put the rising loaves in the fridge to delay the whole process? How long could they remain in the fridge if so? I know that is a strange question but I sometimes have to take an unexpected break when I'm in the middle of things and I ruin a lot of food that way, either by burning or having to abandon the project a few hours before I return to it.

 

[Marianne]

Yes, that $2.50 a loaf shocked me, too! His ingredients probably cost more than $0.50, also. But I've slept since then, I just remember that total...because I was so surprised.

SD, yes, you can really slow down /delay raising bread by putting it in a cool area, and stop it by putting it in the frig. It will take some time to warm back up to start rising again. The only time I did it, my loaves were kinda wonky looking, having risen more on one end than the other, but they tasted fine. I left them in the frig overnight, if I remember correctly. A friend of mine made beirocks one afternoon, put them in the cold garage overnight with a towel over them, back into the house in the morning, then baked them for a luncheon. They were perfect.

I think any yeast bread will rise so much better and faster in a warm area. If it's too cool, I'm not sure that it will completely rise. Often times, just leaving the light on in your oven will help raise the temp just a bit to help.

I wonder if you could 'preheat' a large cooler with a heating pad or something, then remove it, put your bread pans in the cooler and check them in an hour or so? I thought maybe a pan of hot water in your oven would raise the temp too, but the added humidity might not be what you'd want, either.

Oh, what about baking bread in your slow cooker? I make cornbread in mine all the time. There are directions on how to do that on the web. That way, you could bake just one loaf at a time as you wanted it, and use very little electricity. I haven't tried it, and actually forgot about that until now.

Added note, during the hot months, you can use your slow cooker outside so there's no added heat to the house.

 

[CrownofThorns]

The Amish starter is:
1 envelope active dried yeast (or 2-1/4 tsp. of the bulk yeast) dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water. Let stand for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a gallon freezer bag (or your glass/plastic container of choice) mix:
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup milk

Goosh it all together or stir with a wooden or plastic spoon. Add the yeast mixture and goosh again. Let it sit on your counter from then on. Check it periodically to 'burp' the bag. This would be day 1 of the usual 10 day cycle.

THANK YOU!!! I have been wanting to make Friendship bread for AGES and no one had a starter anymore.

Do you have the rest of the instructions by any chance? I was 10 years old the last time we had any.

 

[savingdogs]

I agree, thank you Marianne, my husband will be so happy I found that, he wanted me to make that bread again.

And do you mean crock pot when you say slow cooker?

 

[Icu4dzs]

Yes, that $2.50 a loaf shocked me, too! His ingredients probably cost more than $0.50, also. But I've slept since then, I just remember that total...because I was so surprised.

SD, yes, you can really slow down /delay raising bread by putting it in a cool area, and stop it by putting it in the frig. It will take some time to warm back up to start rising again. The only time I did it, my loaves were kinda wonky looking, having risen more on one end than the other, but they tasted fine. I left them in the frig overnight, if I remember correctly. A friend of mine made beirocks one afternoon, put them in the cold garage overnight with a towel over them, back into the house in the morning, then baked them for a luncheon. They were perfect.

I think any yeast bread will rise so much better and faster in a warm area. If it's too cool, I'm not sure that it will completely rise. Often times, just leaving the light on in your oven will help raise the temp just a bit to help.

I wonder if you could 'preheat' a large cooler with a heating pad or something, then remove it, put your bread pans in the cooler and check them in an hour or so? I thought maybe a pan of hot water in your oven would raise the temp too, but the added humidity might not be what you'd want, either.

Oh, what about baking bread in your slow cooker? I make cornbread in mine all the time. There are directions on how to do that on the web. That way, you could bake just one loaf at a time as you wanted it, and use very little electricity. I haven't tried it, and actually forgot about that until now.

Added note, during the hot months, you can use your slow cooker outside so there's no added heat to the house.

Having changed to home-made bread for the past year now, I can attest to the cost of materials being quite reasonable. What your own personal time is worth can cause some imbalance to that equation, however.

As for the slow cooker, this is an interesting question. When I moved to SDAK, I came with almost nothing...my clothes, some tools, my HD motorcycle and my little blue tractor. As a result of the passing of the mother of one of the folks I had known here for some time, I was given 2d "dibs" on anything in the house I needed, and one of the first things I got was a slow cooker. What was interesting was that this particular "crock pot" had an aluminum container for baking bread. It works great and it is certainly less costly than an entire electric oven.

Of particular importance to me is the consumption of energy particularly if the power "shuts off" either for a brief while or possibly for MUCH longer. To that end I installed 16 solar (PV) panels and a wind turbine which charge 24 batteries (305 amp hour) which then send 48 volts to a 6000 watt inverter. (yes, I know that is a mouthful of technical jargon). The purpose however was to be able to withstand loss of power for extended periods of time here in SD where it can be 30 below for long periods during the winter.

I am able to use the crock pot to bake my bread but found a used bread machine (WelBilt) which works REALLY good (yes, it gets a hole in the bottom of the bread...so what?) Both are able to work on my power system without much drain on the system. An electric oven would completely consume my power and shut the system down until it could be re-charged.

Now, I am able to grind my own flour. Hopefully by next summer my new bee hives will have honey in them. Water from my well and potato starch from my garden is helping a lot with the results of the bread. The salt content is minimal at best. I use butter for the lipid fraction along with honey and potato water. Now if I could just learn to produce my own yeast, I'd have the bread completely self-sufficient...once I get milk from the old girl out in the yard... I've taken to adding gluten to the mix and that has really helped with the consistency of the bread but is rather spendy and really can be eliminated by using bread flour from the store.

The minimum time required by the bread machine is about 4h 20m but it has a time delay so I can put it all in the reaction vessel and set it to be ready when I wake up...WHAT AN UNBELIEVEABLE LUXURY!!!

So, if energy is your issue, the bread machine appears to be the most conservative considering your time to manage ALL the phases of making bread.

I make a one pound loaf and it lasts about 2 days if 2 people eat it. That means there is never left over or stale bread in the house.

I also found the value of some re-cycled styrofoam containers. At the little hospital I work in, the laboratory gets reagents packaged in very nice styrofoam cooler-sized containers, some of which even have a nice cardboard box around them which improved their insulation ability. Obviously these reagents are tightly sealed in glass containers so there is no contamination of the inside of the cooler box.

When it is REALLY cold here(which is often), I put a wet towel in the microwave and heat it (just before it catches fire) for a heat source of the rising in the styrofoam container. Because water has the highest "delta G" of any substance it stays warm for a very long time in there. I put that towel in a plastic bag (to prevent a massive rise in humidity) and lay it in the bottom of the cooler with the bread mix on top of it. Keeps the whole thing warm for quite a while. I do that with a number of things to keep them warm, particularly when I go to a "pass the dish" dinner and have to travel a long distance (that is everywhere out here. ) There are commercial products that can either be frozen or heated to keep things in a cooler. You can get that and see what happens.



YMMV
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[ORChick]

There have been lots of good suggestions here for finding/making a warm spot to raise bread. Another one that I have read of often (though never felt the need to make use of) is to put the bowl on the top of the fridge or water heater; both appliances put off a certain amount of heat, and heat rises.
That said, I choose usually to allow the dough to rise more slowly. A slower rise allows the flavors to develop more, according to the experts; I'm not sure my palate has noticed that particularly, but it does make sense. And I have the time, as well as a cool house. I know time is an issue for many, though of course most of the time involved with bread making is needed by the bread, and not by the baker. I'm kind of a laid back, let things happen as they happen sort of person, so pushing the yeast to work faster goes against my grain, but I can see that others might well have different priorities.

 

[CrownofThorns]

When the fire in our stove is a little low I put a cooling rack that stands about 4 inches off the stove and place the bowl on that. When the stove is hot I stack two of those racks on top of each other and warm there. It works beautifully!