Homemade Bread — Tailwind Acres

Smell that? Hmm, I wish you could. It’s homemade bread. If there was anything I could magically teleport to your household it would be our kitchen smells (and maybe a few of our chicken eggs). There’s usually something permeating - meatballs, Indian curry, squash lasagna, cookies, and bread.

Last Fall a truck unexpectedly pulled into our drive and two men rang our doorbell. I’d spent the morning cleaning and Adam had a loaf of bread in the oven, so I wasn’t self-conscious about the state of the house. It was the best it had looked all month, but I was off put by the unexpectedness of the two strangers. I beckoned Adam to be close in tow as back up incase we were going to be pillaged and robbed.

I opened the door and invited them to set a foot or two into the porch (Midwestern thing, I’m assuming). The older gentleman asked, no joke, “is this some sort of bed and breakfast?” My fear dissolved. Had they showed up a few hours earlier they would have gotten a waft of poopy diapers. Turns out they wanted to hunt pheasants on our land. No. Sorry we weren’t going to let strangers hunt on our land. But I almost said yes with all that good smelling, bed and breakfast, Martha Stewart Living sweet talk.

We recently ordered a 50 pound bag of flour and a pound of dry active yeast, not entirely because of the pandemic. We like to have bulk quantities on hand in normal circumstances. We have a root cellar and food grade buckets that we can store our flour. Time will tell how long the flour lasts us. I’m guessing 3 months. We’ll see.

In response to some requests at work I made a video of Adam’s bread making routine and the staple recipe that he uses. It’s versatile and can be transformed into pizza dough, English muffins, cinnamon raisin bread and other gluteny goodness.

Here’s the Basic Bread Recipe adapted from the Tassajara Bread Book and the video tutorial to show you that baking bread from scratch really shouldn’t be intimating. This recipe makes two loaves.

GETTING STARTED: THE SPONGE:
Add 3 cups of lukewarm water to a mixing bowl.
Water should be about 95-105F.
Add 1/4 cup sweetener (e.g. honey, sugar or molasses).
Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of dry yeast.
Stir lightly & set it aside until it bubbles and foams.
Add 2 cups of white flour & 2 cups of whole wheat flour.
Add the yeast mixture to the 4 cups of flour, stir until fully incorporated.
Cover with plastic wrap or waxed paper & then cover with a dish towel.
Let it sit for 30 minutes at 80-100F temps (could turn your oven on briefly)

SEEING IT TO THE FINISH:
From here on out FOLD, rather than stir. Add 4 teaspoons of salt.
From here on out FOLD, rather than stir. Add 1/3 cup oil or butter.
Fold in another cup of whole wheat flour & 2 cups of white flour.
Flour your hands & knead the dough until incorporated.
Flour your hands, knead the dough. Let it sit for 50-60 minutes, until doubled in size.
Divide the dough into two even sized pieces, place in lightly oiled tins, knead a little.
Take a knife, cut down the center. Let rise until doubled in size.

BAKING:
Preheat oven to 350F (gas) or 325F (electric).
Bake for 35 minutes in the center of your oven rack.
We added 1 tbsp cinnamon & 1/2 cup raisins to our second loaf.

PRESTO! These loaves freeze well if you can keep from devouring the warm loaves right away.