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French Bread
These days, it seems that everyone wants to go back to the days when they did things themselves. Scores of people are raising backyard gardens, farm animals, and even ponds of fish. There’s something in the human sub-conscious mind that is longing for sustainability, not to mention cutting costs.
One of the things making a come-back is bread. No, no, no, not bread made with fancy bread machines or purchased at health-food stores, but bread requires rolling up your sleeves and kneading. It’s fun, it’s easy, and you can make a lot of it for nearly nothing.
We’ve come so far from our roots with kitchen gadgets that do nearly every part of the food making process for us, that doing something like making bread just sounds scary, when really, it’s one of the easiest things you can do in the kitchen.
A basic loaf of bread is so simple, that once you get the hang of it, you’ll always have a loaf on the rise.
Here is a recipe for a simple loaf of bread:
What you’ll need:
• 3 cups flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp yeast
• 1 1/8 cup water
• Large mixing bowl
• Cookie sheet
• Elbow grease
What you’ll do:
1. Mix all of your ingredients in a bowl.
2. If your dough is too wet and won’t come free from the sides of your bowl or sticks to your hands, just add a little more flour. If it’s too dry and won’t form a ball, add more water.
3. Knead for ten minutes.
4. Cover with a clean hand towel and set aside to rise until it doubles in size(about 90 minutes)
5. Punch it down and let it rise again. Punching it down is exactly what it sounds like.
6. When it’s doubled in size again, take it out of the bowl and place it on a cookie sheet and form a loaf(a long blob) by rolling it(think of making play-dough worms, but much bigger). If you don’t feel confident doing this, grease a bread pan and stick it in there.
7. Let it rise again, either in the bread pan or on the cookie sheet until twice its size (about an hour).
8. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
9. Place your bread in the oven and let it back for 45 minutes.
10. If you made it into a long loaf, it may cook faster, so adjust the time accordingly.
11. Enjoy.
Wow, you just made your very own loaf of bread the same way people did it before fancy bread machines and pre-mixed bread machine packages. Doesn’t it feel good? Once you’ve mastered the basic loaf, you’ll understand the mechanics of bread and its ingredients, and you can start learning how to make different kinds.
If you don’t have a sharp bread knife, you’ll want to invest in one if you’re going to stop buying cardboard grocery store bread. You’ll save money, and everyone will love coming to your home to smell the wonderful scent of fresh baked bread. You can never go wrong giving it away at Christmas time, and it will save you so much money.
Is bread really cheaper? Let’s take a look at the costs associated with the above loaf of bread:
• Flour is about a buck a pound(3 cups is right about 1 pound of flour)
• 2 tsps of salt is 2 cents.
• Yeast is about 7 cents
• Electricity is calculated at an average of 50 cents to run your oven for an hour(that’s a variable depending on your oven, but this is an average)
1+.02+.07+.50=$1.59 if you don’t include labor. The labor involved gives you ten minutes of exercise for every loaf, so you should count that as an extra blessing.
Sure, you can get bread at the big box stores for a buck, but have you looked at the ingredients in that bread? Making bread that contains ingredients that you can pronounce is much healthier for your family, and for what you get for a buck vs what you make for about sixty cents more makes home made bread a much better value.
$1.59 for a loaf of home made yummy goodness. That’s frugal and delicious.
Trust me, you’re gonna love it!
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