The Need to Knead

Making homemade bread is a time honored tradition in my mom's family. To me, there is nothing better than homemade bread, just out of the oven. When I make my own bread, I know that it's not full of extra sugars and preservatives...it's just pure homemade goodness. I use half white flour and half wheat to make it healthier. I will share with you my family's recipe-as well as tips to make it a successful experience, in case it's your first time. The recipe makes four loaves, so it lasts my family about a month (extra loaves store well in the freezer). There's really no need to buy bread at the store because this is super easy, cheap, delicious, and healthy! Remember, there's the added benefit of working together with my family to make this happen. Jeepers and JoJo love measuring ingredients and rolling out the dough. Hubby helps by grinding the wheat (more on that later).

I use a Bosch mixer for bread making. That's what my mom uses, that's what my grandma uses, and if they had them back in the day, I'm sure my great grandma would have used it. I also use Fleischman's Instant Dry Yeast. This recipe is based on these, so if you don't have them, you'll have to modify (or consider getting a Bosch- they're awesome!).

The Homemade Bread Recipe...from the kitchen of Grandma Crane

5 c. water

2/3 c. dry milk

6 T. shortening

6 T. sugar

2 T. (scant) salt

12-14 c. flour (I do 6 c. wheat, the rest is white)

2 T. yeast

Heat the water, milk, and shortening until shortening is just melted. If you don't have dry milk, you can just use 5 c. warm milk. Pour ingredients into mixer, add sugar and salt, mix for a few seconds. (Adding the flour and yeast is always the tricky part for most people. Don't pack the flour! Just gently scoop it.) Okay, so first add 4 cups of flour. Make two wells and pour 1 T. into each well see picture). Cover up the wells with 1 more cup of flour. (The object is for the yeast to mix with the flour before it touches the liquid.) Knead the dough until mixed, then gradually add the remaining cups of flour until the sides of the mixer are clean. From this point, knead 4-6 minutes. Grease your fingers and test the dough for elasticity (take a piece, slowly pull apart, should be stretchy). Let rest covered for 20 minutes to make sure the yeast is working (the dough should rise). Grease your loaf pans. Form your loaves (*see super cool video below*) and let rise in pans for 40-60 more minutes. Bake in oven for 15 min. on 400, then 15 min. on 350. Grease tops for prettiness and let cool on cooling rack. Enjoy!!

(The temporary loud noise in the back is Jeepers opening the back door. The wheat grinder was on out there and it is loud!)