poltr1 | More adventures in breadmaking....

After cleaning out my kitchen of extraneous stuff, I now feel more inspired to do things in the kitchen. I think I'm a pretty good cook, especially when I follow the recipe. :-)

One of my favorite things to eat in the winter is homemade bread. And so, I took the bread maker out of its box and put it to use.

Allow me to share some of my more recent successes.

I had a herb bread mix that I purchased several years ago. It was time to use it up. It was sitting in my pantry, taking up space. So I made a loaf of bread out of it. It turned out well.

I found an unopened bag of spelt flour that The Ex purchased years ago from a health food store. She had heard that eliminating one's consumption of wheat would reduce or eliminate many symptoms of asthma. I looked online and found a recipe for making spelt bread. I had all but two of the ingredients - dry milk and lecithin. I went to the health food store to buy lecithin. That stuff is sticky! I baked it on the whole wheat cycle and the loaf turned out fine.

I also made two loaves out of the bag of Gold Medal all-purpose flour I had in the pantry, using the recipe in the instruction book. Yummy!

I remember the first loaf I made in that bread maker. It was all gnarled and shriveled up. That was because I didn't give the loaf any TLC while it was originally being kneaded. I now add a little bit more water during the kneading process, and use a spatula to scrape the sides of the pan to mix the dry ingredients into the dough. I know it's going to be a good loaf when the dough ball travels around the edge of the pan.

As far as I know, flour doesn't have a specific shelf life, but yeast does. It's easy and convenient for me to run to the local Kroger and pick up some yeast packets when I need them.

Baking bread gives me good feelings. I'm using up stuff in my pantry, I'm being productive, and I'm not spending any money on store-baked bread, which is mostly air.