November 9, 2011

Monday evening I attended a class on making bread at a local store.  There is a store in Remington called the Homestead Buttery and Bakery.  If you haven't been there, you need to check it out.  These ladies have a wonderful store and boy, do they know how to bake.  They also make fudge, ice cream and lots of other goodies.  Their cinnamon rolls are the best I've ever eaten.


Anyway, I have recently gotten into making bread from scratch.  I don't use a bread machine..do all the kneading by hand.  The ladies at the Homestead even grind their own wheat kernels, but they do use a really nice mixer that does all the kneading for them.  It's not a Kitchen Aide, but a machine by the Bosch company.  I now have extreme mixer envy and am going to slowly save up my pennies in the hopes of some day purchasing one.  Would also like a wheat grinder, but that can come later.  The ladies at the Homestead do sell the wheat they grind in bags out of the freezer.

Bread from the grocery store is good, but nothing compares to the bread we made that evening in class.  Taking wheat kernels, grinding them to a fine flour, going right into the mixer, kneading, rising then baking.  Most people associate true whole wheat bread with being kind of dry and coarse.  The bread made that evening was the softest and must scrumptious bread ever!  I bought some of their flour and am going to try my hand at making whole wheat bread this weekend.  The recipe they use also calls for honey and some oil.  Even though the class was taught using the mixer for kneading, I did get some tips from the ladies on kneading by hand.  And also successful dough rising techniques. 


Can you imagine how precious fresh bread was back in pioneer days?  They had to grind the wheat by hand..no fancy electric mills back then.  And no fancy electric mixers.  If you keep going back further, in Biblical times it was mostly unleavened bread.