I recently started baking bread. My family goes through an absurd amount of the stuff, and as I’m sure you know, good bread can be very expensive, and cheap bread is often very over processed (and un-bread-like in many qualities). I finally got sick of having to make that choice, and decided to ask on the BN group to see if anyone had one collecting dust.
Sure enough, we had a bread machine sitting on our counter within a few hours. Wooohoooooo. It’s been fun to play around with making bread, tweaking recipes and learning how to work the machine. I’ve found a couple of things that have made bread making sustainable in our house, so I thought I’d share them.
Find a simple recipe
Most of my bread making is for straight up sandwich bread. I use the same recipe each day, and that makes it super easy. I found a honey oat recipe online, and then starting playing and tweaking it to make it the right recipe for our family. I wanted a whole wheat bread that was still light and fluffy, and I think I’ve just about got it right at this point:
Note: you can totally make this recipe without the wheat gluten. The bread will still taste delicious, but it will be dense because whole wheat flour struggles to keep a rise without it. We love it both ways, and I still make the recipe when we run out of the gluten.
Once you have all the ingredients read, simply add them to your bread machine in the order it requires (mine is wet ingredients first and dry second), and then simply hit the “whole wheat” button.
If you’re a sucker for that smell of oven-baked bread and a prettier looking loaf, you can also hit the “dough” button, and then transfer your dough to the oven to bake. When I do that I usually brush it with some olive oil and sprinkle some kosher salt on it 😉
Prep in bulk
So this one has been the biggest piece of the sustainability puzzle. I know myself well enough to know that if it isn’t easy to do, I won’t keep up the practice. And getting out all the ingredients every day, easy though they may be, is not feasible and makes too much of a mess. Soooooo what to do.
As is usually my answer- I prep in bulk. My mom graciously got us containers (PS they are fabulous and on sale currently) to hold bulk flour and oats, which have been AMAZING. Since the honey oat whole wheat bread is my base recipe, I prep about 20 quart size ziploc bags of the dry ingredients at once. They sit in a bin on top of our microwave, and then in the morning, all I do is measure out the water and the oil, toss in a bag of dry ingredients, and then add the yeast on top. Super simple. Super sustainable.
Now that I’m feeling more confident in my bread making abilities, I’m starting to venture out past this recipe. So far I’ve tried a rosemary garlic bread, and the kids and I have made some super yummy cinnamon rolls. I’m also aiming to make a chocolate chip banana bread in the next couple days. Leave a comment with a link if you’ve got a favorite bread recipe, we’d love to try them!
Also, check out this super adorable linen bread bag from Faith and Fabric design. Making home made bread on the regular has made me understand why bread bags and bread boxes are so valuable.
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