Bread

I have never been a bread-lover.  I could not eat another piece of bread the rest of my life, and I honestly would not miss it.  In my quest for a soy-free diet (by choice, you can read about it here), I have been on a search for a bread made without soy.  I finally found one a while ago, from Whole Foods, it's their 365 Organic brand Early Bird Multi Seed Bread.  I, unfortunately, can't find a webpage that shows it (and don't have a picture of it).  It's a wheat based bread and has sunflower, pumpkin, sesame and poppy seeds in it.  It's sooo good, I love it!  I do not eat it a lot, mostly because I have never been a big fan of bread, and also because each slice is 4 PP+ per slice.  The slices are a good size, and I usually cut one in half and make a sandwich with the two halves of the slice.

I usually buy two loaves at a time and freeze them in four slice packages.  One four-slice package usually lasts over a week - that's how seldom I eat bread.  I defrost one package in the refrigerator, then put it in the bread box until I eat it.  I have yet to have any go bad (yeah!).  When I eat the last slice of bread in the bread box, I put another package in the refrigerator to unthaw.

I went to pull another package out of the freezer the last week and noticed that there was only one left in the freezer, and it was time to buy more bread.  About this time I had been browsing the King Arthur website.  If you are a baker, this website is like baking porn!!  Anyway....I happened upon a recipe for Molasses Multi-Seed Bread on their website.  It sounded really good and intrigued me.  I spent a few weeks thinking about it, and finally decided to try making it for myself.

So, I bought the ingredients I needed, and instead of the seeds in the recipe, I used the ones in the Whole Foods bread that I like.  I also used slightly less than a quarter cup of molasses, and made up the rest with honey (I like a slightly sweet bread).  I used my Kitchen Aid mixer to mix up the dough, and switched to the dough hook to finish the job.  I then kneaded it a few times by hand.  The recipe makes two full loaves of bread, so I decided to do some experimenting.  After the first rise, I split the dough in half and formed one half into a loaf (sort of....didn't have an actual loaf pan).  And the other half I split in half again.  I made 9 dinner rolls and 5 hamburger buns from that half. 

The dinner rolls were put into an 8" square pyrex dish and allowed to rise again.  The hamburger buns were put on a cookie sheet, and the "loaf" was put into an 8"x12" pyrex dish.  They all went back into the oven (gas oven w/pilot light) to rise a second time.  Gotta love pilot lights!!

Once they were risen, I proceeded to bake them.  The first ones I baked were the hamburger buns.  Here's what they looked like when they came out of the oven:

Don't my buns look good?!?!?!?!?!

Once the hamburger buns were cooled, I cut one in half to see how it looked and tasted.  It was FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!  I've never tasted bread so good in my life!!!!  I literally ate the entire bun in less than a minute.

Mmmmm......lots of seedy goodness!!!!

 
The hamburger buns were HUGE!  They clocked in at 6 PP+ per roll (yikes!). 


The dinner rolls, on the other hand, came out to 3 PP+ per roll - a much more reasonable amount of points for bread (at least in my opinion).  I think I may try making the dinner rolls in a slightly bigger pan, to yield slightly bigger rolls and use those as dinner rolls and hamburger buns.  I don't like huge hamburger buns (the ones in the store are even too big for me).  Here are what the dinner rolls looked like when they came out of the oven:

And after pulling them apart:

I can't wait to eat one and see how it is!!!


Here is the "loaf" of bread that I baked.  It's not quite loaf shaped, and I wasn't quite sure how to cut into it, etc...... so I gave it away to Muffin's family!

My plan is to buy this Pain de Mie pan from King Arthur, and make my own sandwich loaf bread!


So...I may have to retract my "I'm not a bread lover" comment and replace it with I love certain kinds of bread.  It was truly scary how excited I got over the home made bread!!!

~Chelle