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Hi there!

I’m slowly working towards some simplicity within the home, but hey! It’s a lot of hard work!

I love having a go at growing my own veges and always use herbs fresh from my garden. I try to plant from seed whenever I can and have learnt to save and share my own seed for the following year. I make Award Winning preserves and pickles; and my husband brews Award Winning boutique beers as well. I love to stockpile and try to limit quick trips to the shops. I dabble in bread making and enjoy making my own stocks too.

I enjoy feeding my family good hearty meals, nothing like those tiny restaurant stacks you have to look for on the plate. My husband maintains our vehicles and machinery and we both enjoy fabricating on a small scale mostly relying on metal & timber recyclers for any materials needed.


While I don’t always have time to reply to comments, I love reading them. I hope you enjoy your stay and I hope you learn something new because I love sharing what I learn, and I'm always looking for another new skill myself.

Cheers!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Wholemeal bread - a triple batch

I love making bread! Once you master it...your confidence grows even more to try other breads. When I make bread, I usually form it into rolls which is easily divided come meal time. Some favourites at home are our Kefir Milk Bread Rolls, Ground Soy Linseed and Almond bread and even the good old traditional white bread. I've even had a go at making Baguettes, but these recipes on my blog have all been using my bread machine in some way. I'm not sure I want to use my bread machine any more, as one thing that has always bothered me is the amount of dough for the time invested.......

I want to get the family used to eating my home-made bread on a day to day basis, but  it seems that old habits are hard to break when it comes to the lunch time sandwich......(And I have that extra challenge of making it every day myself, although I think it may be a timing challenge more than anything). When I was a Nanny back in my late teens, I made all the family's bread, but these days, I only make it roughly once a week, and on special occasions.....and it's always gone way too quick! 


For my birthday on Friday I was blessed to received a grain mill attachment for my Kenwood Mixer. So over the weekend I have been playing with the mill and also my lovely dough hook. Ahhhhh the joys of kneading are slipping my mind very quickly as I watch yet another big batch of dough working its magic in the Kenwood. "Maybe I can do this challenge" I think to myself. Maybe it won't be that hard if I don't have to knead the dough by hand............Maybe my family CAN enjoy the lovely aroma, flavour and goodness of fresh bread everyday; like the same that has come out of my kitchen for the last 3 consecutive days.

I've tried three recipes so far for Wholemeal bread...all bulk recipes to suit my Kenwood. I discovered in the instruction manual that the Kenwood can comfortably cope with 1.36kg of flour in making up a bread dough. This gives me more than one loaf of bread for the same amount of prep time. Brilliant!! I'm all for batch cooking as you know.

As I had trouble sourcing grain on Friday morning...I only bought 500g of wheat from the local health food store. This cost me $2.10....so there must be a cheaper way to buy wheat.....but seeing it was the first time I was using my new grain mill....I dismissed the price. (just this once). I have to be sensible about this too, seeing I still have plenty of bulk flour in my store cupboard to use up; but this also gives me time to find a cheaper supplier of fresh wheat, spelt, chia, quinoa, hemp or other grains.
Any suggestions for (bulk) grain suppliers for the Illawarra area would be greatly appreciated!! 
Or cost effective postable quantities ......


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Wholemeal bread........a triple batch! This recipe comes from the recipe book that came with my Kenwood Chef Major....I just tripled the recipe to suit.

1125 grams Wholemeal Flour
225 grams plain White Flour
6 teaspoons salt
4 1/2 teaspoons dried yeast
900 mls lukewarm water

Wow, 5 ingredients.....DS20 looked around for a recycled bread bag from a store bought bread and had to count the ingredient list....19 ingredients....Hmmmm there's something to be said there!

Sorry, I've been blabbing on a bit with this post, but it's been a while since I chatted with you all...lol...so......

Back to the recipe.....
Place the flours, salt and yeast in the Kenwood bowl, and using the dough hook on the minimum speed....gradually add the lukewarm water. Mix on minimum speed until a soft dough is formed.

Knead for 1 minute on minimum speed, then 4 to 5 minutes on speed 1. You are looking for the dough to be smooth (as smooth as wholemeal grain can look anyway)...and elastic looking.  Once the dough is kneaded....cover with lightly oiled plastic film and leave to rise. Best risen in a warm place....If it's a cold day, the perfect climate to rise a bread dough is in the warmth of a closed car parked in the sun.

Once the dough doubles in size........

Knock it back and roll out onto a lightly floured bench. Knead it for a few minutes to knock the air out of the dough.

This is when you shape the dough to what breads you want.....You could make one huge free-form loaf like this......

But this mixture was enough for two medium loaves of bread and 8 dinner rolls. The other night I also made 1 extra large loaf of bread and 10 rolls.

So it's really just up to your imagination or family needs. I can tell you though...that if you have just enough bread rolls to accompany a meal....there's no fights over anyone sneaking an extra slice when your not looking. We have 5 people in our family, so I always make up rolls in lots of 5. The rolls are shared out evenly, but also allocated for meals and NOT hungry teenager snacks. ...It can be frustrating to see all that hard work to be gobbled up in 5 minutes, just because your not in the kitchen when your boys come home....I'm sure you've been there, even with biscuits or cake too.

(Hubby is away through the week now...so this lot is two batches of four...Sorry Hubby you miss out on this lot) .....I did give Hubby a huge loaf to take with him though...... and have since been told that the lady he is staying with insisted they sat down and had a slice immediately ....with my home-made blackberry jam. I'm glad you like my bread Lola!

Weighing the dough out evenly for rolls
makes them bake all at the same size.
Preheat the oven now to 230 degrees celcius.....and allow the shaped dough to rise again....
Ready for the 2nd rise
Now add the rolls to the oven, these will be risen and ready before the loaves.....Bake the rolls for roughly 15 to 20 minutes or until they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.
Once the rolls are removed from the oven, place the larger tins in and bake for 10 minutes before turning the oven down to 200 degrees....and baking for a further 20 to 30 minutes.  Remove tins from the oven and take the bread out of the tin immediately....allow the bread to cool on a wire rack.

The wire rack is hidden beneath the tea-towel.
I also covered the loaves with the other half of the tea-towel
allowing them to cool before putting away.


I'm loving this wholemeal bread, I can't wait to source some wheat grain, so I can grind my own flour fresh for each loaf.


Do you have a grain mill? If so, what other ingredients do you mill?

13 comments:

  1. Those rolls are just too cute - rectangular muffin trays LOL

    I'd love to make bread every day, but I won't use my (electric) oven, and we don't always have temperatures suitable to bake in the solar oven. There again, in winter on the farm, I will have the Dover stove going...

    Thanks for the recipe - have to try it out! I agree - our (shop bought) bread also has 17 ingredients - among them palm fat (high in cholesterol) emulsifiers, flour improvers, preservatives, and soya flour...

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  2. A belated Happy Birthday to you, NellyMary! :)

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  3. I leave my dough to rise in the same bowl you have...I love it..it is my favourite bowl to mix in!!

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  4. Lol, note to self - do not read NellyMary's posts on recipes an hour after breakfast or I will feel like second breakfast! I love the little long rolls as mine are always round rolls.
    Just a thought re bulk purchases - ask the health food store if they will order in a bulk bag for you (I've seen 16kg bags of grains at ours but I think they come in 10kg too) and what the price is. You may have to prepurchase but if you order regularly they'll appreciate the custom. I'm also wondering if laws permit bakeries to sell on base goods or if it is only made goods they have permission to retail.
    Cheers,
    Robyn

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  5. not sure if this helps, but feed stores sell clean wheat for chickens, would this be usable for your flour? You may have to visit a feed store and ask them there about the wheat the sell.

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  6. I love your little oblong roll tin - I will keep my eye out for one of those! Bread disappears fast at my place when I bake a loaf too!

    Cheers - Joolz

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  7. Happy Birthday - what a wonderful present! I love to make home made bread but you are right we eat too much of it so I only keep it for a special occasion.

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  8. Beautiful! I love making bread! Good job!!!
    Melissa

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  9. Just wanted to let everyone know that I bought some wheat from the local pet supply shop....It has weevils in it :(...I did strain some to grind it up and cook a few loaves of bread with it.
    Would you do the same?

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  10. I love whole grain bread! especialy toasted with marmite.

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  11. Hi there nellymary,

    I'm so glad to 'meet' you, as I live up on the mountain above you, in Robertson.
    Can you say me waving at you? lol.

    I make my own sourdough bread, from my own starter.
    I don't buy shop bread unless I have too.

    I make my own bread for health reasons as well as econonomical, so no, I wouldn't buy my wheat from the pet supply shop.

    I try to buy all that sort of thing bulk online.
    I buy my wheat from Santos trading. http://www.santostrading.com.au and I have it delivered. I buy my wheat in 20kg bags and store it in sealed containers.

    The postage is a bit expensive, but I try to put in a decent size order which then spreads the postage out over the items to make it viable.

    I buy rice, wheat, bulk spices, sea salt, beans/legumes/, all that sort of stuff.

    I use a kitchenaid with a dough hook to knead the dough.
    My pride and joy that I have just recently bought, is a grain mill. It is a German brand, forget the name off hand. I LOVE it. One of the best things I ever bought.
    I researched into grain mills quite a bit before buying it, and I was considering the grain mill attachment for my kitchenaid, but made the choice to go this way. Gosh, it makes light work out of it. Brilliant.

    My family love my bread, and I have noticed that when I have to buy bread, even the bread we used to really enjoy, it isn't half as tasty as my sourdough bread.

    By the way, I love craft as well.

    cheers for now
    Fi

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  12. Hi NellyMary,

    What a great idea for a present for you!

    We buy flour in bulk from the Flame Tree Coop in Thirroul. Might be a bit far for you to travel to pick it up, and you need to order in advance, but they have great organic flours available. I think they order from Demeter.

    All the best,
    Emma

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  13. Hello there... Nelly Mary, I've just stumbled upon your most wonderful site and look forward to much reading! I am from Greystanes NSW and and delighted to see such wonderful homely and passionately posted stuff. Many thanks for your contribution! Just one quick question: I am into bread baking using my Kenwood chef and want to used Spelt flour... I wonder, can your above recepie be modified somewhat to suit this flour? Do you think Could I still use dry yeast etc...? Many thank for any help! Kind Regards, SandyB

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