Branching Out

I  have been making homemade bread for over a year now. It all started with finding the Master Recipe to "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day"  . Then I just had to buy the book.  I have not really ventured out from the master reicpe except to make the cinnamon rolls.  I enjoy this book because the recipes are for breads that don't have to be kneaded.  Last November I started buying wheat berries and grinding my own grain to make flour. 

I have been making the following recipe weekly, as we use it for our sandwiches.  I received this recipe from a friend of mine who has 10 children, so the recipe itself makes 5 loaves of bread.  Since our family is a bit smaller, I have cut the recipe in thirds for us but have on occasion made the full one.

3/4 cup oil

3/4 cup honey
4 tsp. salt
5 cups warm water
3 Tbsp. yeast
14 cups flour

Stir the first five ingredients together along with half  of the flour.  Then add the rest of the flour. The dough will probably get hard to stir. Put flour on your hands and start kneading the dough. You will have to add more flour to your hands and bread as you knead. After 6-8 minutes, or until the bread is no longer sticky, stop kneading and set it aside. (we usually cover the bowl with a towel to help it rise faster.) Once it has reached twice its height, divide it into five parts before placing them in buttered loaf pans. It bakes at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Well, I have decided to branch out and try new bread recipes.  My main inspiration will be two cookbooks, the one mentioned above ("Aristan Bread in Five Minutes a Day") and an additional bread cookbook that I  purchased before moving to Korea, "Kneadlessly Simple". 

This week I have also found two recipes online that I wanted to try.  The first was for hamburger rolls.  I will probably get to this one in the next two weeks, when we have an upcoming cookout on the schedule.  But, yesterday, I was making lasagna for Angel's Bible Study that he teaches on-post,  so I wanted to make a french or italian bread to go with it.  I found the recipe at a blog I have been frequenting called, Balancing Beauty and Bedlam.  It looked fairly simple  so I decided to try it out.

Now remember, we do not have all of our belongings here in Korea yet, so I am missing some key cookware with which to make things.  I ended up taking the broiler pan from our small oven and putting a piece of non stick foil on top of it. Our oven here measures 17" x 12" x 15", much smaller than ours in the states that measures 24-1/8 x 19-1/2 x 19-3/8.  Here is a link to the blog and recipe that I used.

Overall, I think  it turned out  pretty well. I little oddly shaped, but it tasted great and there were no leftovers to bring home today.