Venus Loci

As a birthday present this past year my mom subscribed me to Mother Earth News.  This magazine is like sitting on a rural backporch in 1965 exchanging homemaking secrets with your best friends, who happen to be Rachel Carson, Sacagawea and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  The magazine gives you all the information and inspiration you ever needed to live solely off the land.  I’m now convinced that not only can I bake my own bread, but I can grow my own wheat, make my own flour, and build my own solar oven to bake the bread in.

I should probably preface the rest of this post with this statement: I don’t really “do” recipes.  Save for one thing: baking.  Baking requires a certain amount of chemistry knowledge that I just don’t have.  Rather than create my own Bunsen burner experiments, I rely upon the tried and tested steps spelled out to me in cookbooks and occasionally on the back of Naturally Nora boxes.  This time I followed directions spelled out to me in the December/January issue of Mother Earth News.  The article was called “Healthy No-Knead Bread Recipes”, and it promised me that I could bake a loaf of bread by the traditional yeast method quickly, and inexpensively.  In fact, they estimated that making your own bread costs just $.40 a loaf.  Considering that I usually spend $5-$6 on whole wheat bread from Sweetish Hill Bakery, I thought it might make financial sense to give bread-making a shot.

The simple recipe that I followed below yielded 4 small loaves.  The bread is a dense whole wheat and I opted to use a mix of sunflower, flax & sesame seeds on the crust.  I am baking without a baking stone, so instead I warmed my cookie sheet for 30 minutes prior to baking, placed the loaf in the bottom 1/3 of the oven, and added a cup of water to my broiler below the racks to create steam.  This recipe is from the book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  Based on the success of this recipe I’m looking forward to buying a copy and trying some other recipes!

10 Grain Bread

• 2 cups 10-grain hot cereal (Bob’s Red Mill brand), uncooked
• 3 cups white whole wheat flower (made from wheat varieties with pale, mild-tasting bran layers)
• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1-1/2 tbsp (2 packets) granulated yeast
• 1 tbsp kosher salt
• 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten
• 3-1/2 cups lukewarm water
• 1 to 2 tbsp seed mixture for sprinkling on top: sesame, flaxseed, caraway, sunflower, poppy and/or anise

1- Whisk together the cereal, flours, yeast, salt & vital wheat gluten in a 5-quart bowl, or lidded (not airtight) food container.

2- Add the water and mix without kneading, using a spoon, a food processor (w/dough attachment) or a heavy-duty stand mixer (with paddle).  You may need to get your hands wet to get the flour to incorporate if not using a machine.

3- Cover (not airtight), and allow the dough to rest at room temperature until it rises and collapses (or flattens on top), approx. 2 hours.

4- The dough can be used immediately after the initial rise, though it is easier to handle when cold.  Refrigerate it in a lidded (not airtight) container and use over the next week.

5- On baking day, dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1 lb. (grapefruit size) piece.  Dust with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around tot he bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go.

6- Elongate the ball into an oval.  Allow the loafto rest for 90 minutes (40 minutes if you’re using fresh, unrefrigerated dough), covered loosely with plastic wrap, on a pizza peel prepared with cornmeal or lined with parchment paper.  Alternatively, you can let the loaf rest on a silicone mat or a greased cookie sheet.

7- Thirty minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 450 degrees, with a baking stone near the middle rack.  Place an empty broiler tray on any other rack.

8- Just before baking, use a pastry brush to paint the top crust with water.  Sprinkle with the seed mixture and slash the loaf with 1/4″ deep parallel cuts, using a serrated knife.

9- Slide the loaf directly onto the hot stone (or place the silicone mat or cookie sheet on the stone if you used one).  Pour a cup of hot water into the broiler tray, and quickly close the oven door.  Bake for about 30 minutes, until richly browned and firm.  If you used parchment paper, a silicone mat, or a cookie sheet under the loaf, carefully remove it and bake it directly on the stone or an oven shelf at about 2/3 of the way through the baking time.  (smaller or larger loaves will require adjustment in resting and baking time).

10- Allow to cool on a rack before slicing.