Gluten is produced through the kneading process. As you knead the dough, the protein in the wheat is converted into gluten, which makes it gooey. It’s this gluten that turns the dough into a balloon so that it traps all the gasses produced by the yeast and helps it rise really well. So, if you don’t have enough protein in your flour or if you don’t knead long enough, you won’t get enough gluten and the bread won’t rise well.

I think this is probably where the notion that ground wheat doesn’t rise well came from. Not enough kneading and/or using the wrong type of wheat. “Hard Red” wheat has the highest protein content with as much as 15% for spring wheat. That’s even higher than bread flour. Hard or soft “White” wheat has a much lower protein content and thus, won’t produce a fluffy sandwich bread without adding extra gluten. So, with all of that said, here is the recipe. I’ve provided links to the various ingredients. Enjoy!

Sandwich Bread Loaf:

Dry Ingredients:

• 3.5 Cups of Ground Hard Red Wheat Flour
• 2 TBSP of Ground Flax Seed
• 1 TBSP of Salt
• 2 TBSP of Soy Lecithin

Wet Ingredients:

• 12 oz. of Warm Water
• 2 TBSP of Olive Oil
• 2 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
• 2 TBSP of Honey

Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together into the mixer bowl. Don’t add the yeast to the dry ingredients.
2. Now add the dry yeast, oil and honey to the warm water and stir it around with a fork vigorously until all of the honey is dissolved.
3. Now walk away and let the yeast liquid sit and fester for about 15 minutes. The yeast is going to get really active and start to foam up(this is called “proofing” the yeast).
4. Start the mixer on medium speed, using dough hooks, and let the dry ingredients get thoroughly mixed together.
5. Now begin drizzling the yeast liquid mixture into the bowl until the whole thing is mixed in.
6. Knead the dough on medium speed for 15 minutes.
7. Flour the counter top and dump the dough out onto it.
8. Knead the dough by hand for a few minutes just to make sure it’s smooth and not too wet.
9. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
10. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
11. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
12. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for an hour or until it doubles in size.
13. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out. Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
14. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute. You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
15. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan. Use plenty of lard/crisco. You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan. That’s a disaster.
16. Form the dough into a square shape, seam side down, and drop it into the loaf pan.
17. Cover and let sit again until it rises about an inch above the sides of the pan.
18. Mix one egg together with 2 TBSP of cold water in a small bowl. Using a sauce brush, wipe the top of the loaf thoroughly with the egg/water mixture(called an egg wash) so that it’s coated good. You can also crush up some almonds and sprinkle them on top for a nice touch.
19. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
20. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
21. When the timer goes off the bread is done. Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour, then slice and eat.

Beer Bread:

Dry Ingredients:

• 2.5 Cups of Wheat Flour
• 1 Cup of Bread Flour
• 1 TBSP of Salt

Wet Ingredients:

• 12 oz. bottle of warm beer
• 1 oz. of olive oil
• 2 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
• 2 TBSP of Honey

Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Don’t add the yeast to the dry ingredients.
2. Warm the beer by putting the bottle/can in a bowl of hot water for about 10 minutes. Longer if it came out of the fridge. You want it warm. Not hot, not cold. Warm.
3. Now add the dry yeast, oil and honey to the warm beer and stir it around with a fork vigorously until all of the honey is dissolved.
4. Now walk away and let the yeast liquid sit and fester for about 15 minutes. The yeast is going to get really active and start to party. Don’t crash it.
5. Come back and dump the liquid/yeast mix into the dry ingredients.
6. Get your hands wet with some water and begin to mix. You will get messy, but it’s worth it.
7. When everything is mixed thoroughly, flour the countertop and dump the dough out onto the flour.
8. Knead the dough for 6 minutes until smooth, adding plenty of flour as needed. Don’t skimp.
9. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
10. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
11. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
12. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for an hour until it at least doubles in size.
13. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out. Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
14. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute. You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
15. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan. Use plenty of lard/crisco. You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan. That’s a disaster.
16. Cover and let sit again for about 30 minutes. It will rise quite a bit, but don’t let it get too big where it’s ballooning out over the sides of the pan.
17. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
18. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
19. When the timer goes off the bread is done. Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour.

The Scratch Version:

Dry Ingredients:

• 2 Cups of Wheat Flour
• 1/2 Cup of Bread Flour
• 1 TBSP of Salt
• 2 tsp Cocoa Powder

Wet Ingredients:

• 5 oz. room-temp Whole Milk
• 1 oz. of Vegetable Oil
• 1 TBSP Sugar

Pre-ferment:

• 1 Cup (8 oz.) of Yeast Water
• 1/2 Cup of Milled Wheat Flour
• 1/2 Cup of Bread Flour

Instructions:

1. Mix up your pre-ferment 72 hours before you plan to make your bread using the recipe above. On the day of bread making, move to step 2.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and dump in your pre-ferment dough.
3. Dump the milk and oil into the mix.
4. Get your hands wet with some water and begin to mix. You will get messy, but it’s worth it.
5. When everything is mixed thoroughly, flour the countertop and dump the dough out onto the flour.
6. Knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth, adding plenty of flour as needed. Don’t skimp.
7. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
8. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
9. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
10. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for a few hours until it at least doubles in size. Give it plenty of time. I’ve even had to leave them overnight before.
11. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out. Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
12. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute. You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
13. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan. Use plenty of lard/crisco. You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan. That’s a disaster.
14. Cover and let sit again for as long as it takes to rise again. You want it to double in size.
15. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
16. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
17. When the timer goes off the bread is done. Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour.

Now, you’ve just made bread totally from scratch. Little House on the Prarie eat your heart out.

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/2 Cup Bread Flour
• 1/2 Cup Wheat Flour

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 Cup (8 oz.) Yeast Water

Directions:

1. Combine flour and yeast water in a medium sized container, something about the size of a pickle jar.  Cover with a clean hand towel and let sit for 48 to 72 hours.  If you can’t use it immediately after the 72 hours is up, just lid it and stick it in the fridge until ready to use.
2. After 24 hours it will start to look like a sponge, with large air holes all in it.  This is the yeast doing it’s magic.

That’s all there is to it. The yeast in our home grown yeast water will take over and begin to grow and produce great flavours as they eat the sugars in the mixture. Remember, it’s the yeast that makes bread taste like bread. That’s why this pre-ferment makes such a big difference in flavour. It’s also very important that you remember to subtract these amounts from your main ingredients list for your bread.  So instead of using 6 oz. of water and 5 oz. of milk, just leave out the water from the final recipe.  Adjust the flour amounts down to compensate as well.  I’ve read that a pre-ferment also helps the bread to preserve longer.  I don’t understand the chemistry involved in that so I’ll just have take that on faith.

In the next post we will put it all together and give a complete scratch bread recipe with full instructions. Now go make your pre-ferment.

Once you have your wheat you will need a grinder(mill). The one we have is the Wonder Mill Jr. It’s a hand crank mill that comes with steel grinding wheels and stone grinding wheels. The stone will get a finer grind for a more authentic flour, but the steel plates are nice as well for things like grinding corn into corn meal. We chose a hand grinder in case we ever got into a survival situation without power. In that case we could still make bread with a gas oven. It’s up to you which route you go. The hand grinder is irreplaceable when you need it, but inconvenient for day to day use. It’s a trade off. Just do your research.

When you first start grinding your own wheat flour for bread baking, you will find out soon that the flour is very heavy. In order to get a good bread it’s necessary to get the grind down very fine. We do that by getting a large basket strainer and sifting out the flour to trap all the large pieces. We then dump the contents of the sifter back into the mill and grind it again. That gets the flour down very fine and makes great flour for bread. If your grind is too big, it won’t rise well or it will come out hard as a brick. Just experiment with small batches to get your method down.

Ok, the first thing we’re going to need is yeast so that’s what we’ll cover today. Have you ever been making bread and wondered what people did before instant yeast? Well, they either didn’t leven their bread or they cultured their own yeast in the form of “yeast water.” It’s actually very simple.

Yeast Water:

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 Handful of Raisins
• Pinch of Sugar

Wet Ingredients:

• Quart Sized Jar full of Tap Water

Instructions:

1. Put raisins and sugar in a jar full of water. Something about the size of a pickle jar should do. But, please don’t use a pickle jar unless you want some dill bread.
2. Leave the jar open and sitting on the countertop for 5 days.
3. When it smells strongly of yeast, you have yeast water!

Yes, it really is that simple. The yeast that is naturally occurring on most fruits and vegetables will begin to eat the sugar and replicate into a nice yeast colony. Now, using the yeast water involves replacing your 5 ounces of water in the original recipe I gave you with an equal amount of yeast water. But instead of mixing it with the milk/sugar/oil, we will mix the yeast water into a “pre-ferment.” I’ll show you how to do that in the next post.

* I learned about making yeast water from this great site: http://originalyeast.blogspot.com/

Also, I want to mention that the technical part of this bread recipe can be made in one of two ways. The modern version that’s fast, or the totally from scratch pioneer version that will blow your tongue off. It’s up to you which route you go. I’ll explain the modern variant in this post and the totally(and I mean totally) from scratch version in the next post.  This is the version I’ve settled on for awesome sandwich bread, but this recipe is very, very changeable.  It’s a great starting recipe to use and adapt to make all different types of yummy rolls, bagels and french breads.

The Modern Version:

Dry Ingredients:

• 2.5 Cups of Wheat Flour
• 1 Cup of Bread Flour
• 1 TBSP of Salt
• 2 tsp cocoa powder

Wet Ingredients:

• 8 oz. warm water
• 5 oz. warm whole milk
• 1 oz. of vegetable oil
• 2 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
• 1 TBSP Sugar

Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.  Don’t add the yeast or sugar to the dry ingredients.
2. Mix the water, oil and milk together in a large cup and warm it up a bit.  Not hot, just warm.  A little more than luke warm.  You don’t want to kill the yeast.
3. Now add the dry yeast and sugar to the warm liquid and stir it around with a fork vigorously until all of the sugar is dissolved.
4. Now walk away and let the yeast liquid sit and fester for about 15 minutes.  The yeast is going to get really active and start to party.  Don’t crash it.
5. Come back and dump the liquid/yeast mix into the dry ingredients.
6. Get your hands wet with some water and begin to mix.  You will get messy, but it’s worth it.
7. When everything is mixed thoroughly, flour the countertop and dump the dough out onto the flour.
8. Knead the dough for  6 minutes until smooth, adding plenty of flour as needed.  Don’t skimp.
9. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
10. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
11. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
12. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for an hour until it at least doubles in size.
13. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out.  Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
14. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute.  You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
15. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan.  Use plenty of lard/crisco.  You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan.  That’s a disaster.
16. Cover and let sit again for about 30 minutes.  It will rise quite a bit, but don’t let it get too big where it’s ballooning out over the sides of the pan.
17. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
18. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
19. When the timer goes off the bread is done.  Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour.

That sounds like a ton of steps, but it’s really not that hard.  Try and make it a few times. You’ll get better each time and it tastes delicious. You’ll never eat sandwiches with store bought bread again. Once you’ve nailed down this recipe, you’re ready to kick it up and go old-school.  That involves hand grinding your wheat flour, using home cultured yeast and making a pre-ferment.  I’ll show you how to do that next time.

If you have a gas fireplace that has a wall switch or remote to turn on the flame, you don’t need A/C power in order to use it. The switch itself isn’t connected to the house power. It’s connected to a thing next to the pilot light called a “thermopile.” A thermopile is a device that converts heat into electricity. In the case of gas logs, all it needs is enough electricity to open the main gas valve, which would be just a few hundred milliwatts. So, in case you are in our same predicament you can rest assured that you can at least cordon off your living room and stay warm if you lose power.

Here’s some more info on gas log ignitor design:

http://hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/how_gas_works

Monsanto was predictably demonized in the film. They have been a favorite target of the hard left and environmental groups ever since Vietnam when they manufactured “Agent Orange” and later “DDT.” This wasn’t necessarily fair though, since many other chemical companies manufactured those products as well. Their record of chemical dumping, such as in Anniston, AL has also gained them much grief and drove them to the verge of bankruptcy under the weight of all of the lawsuits. Their new emergence as an agricultural company gave them a fresh start in the public opinion realm, but they soon stepped in it again with the whole patented seeds issue. They just seem to be a magnet for bad P.R. Patenting and genetically modifying seeds, I think, is one idea that they and the farm community as a whole is going to live to regret. I said yesterday that they have sold their soul to the government for short term gain. I think that’s the real evil behind the whole thing. I did my research and came up with some conclusions that I’ll share with you.

First off, it’s important to recognize that just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Abortion is legal, but it’s not moral. In Alabama, firing someone for no cause is legal. But it’s a bad idea. Who would want to work for you? In the same way, Monsanto has put all of it’s recent efforts since the late 90′s into patenting certain strains of seeds that are resistant to weed killer. These are the so-called “Roundup Ready” seeds that have been genetically altered to be resistant to Monsanto’s weed-killer chemical called Round Up. Because these plants are un-harmed by Round Up, the field can now be flooded with weed killer and everything dies, except the crop.

Obviously, you can see the benefit of this. Weed management is a breeze now and much less labour intensive. But, I hope you also see the inherent down side. We now harvest crops that have been saturated with weed killer. Who knows what long term effects that has to the plant, and consequently, to us as consumers. The whole thing strikes me as a really bad idea. We’re always assured that things are safe in the beginning. It’s not until a few decades go by that we often see the unintended side-effects of what we do.

I’m more interested, however, in the patent aspect of all this. It’s my firm belief that patents are immensely harmful to society, across the board, without exception. Patents are entirely created by government. Without government, patents don’t exist. In fact, patents have really only existed for about 200 years, starting in 1790(yes, I’m aware of common law patent writs before then, but I’m talking about codified law). Before then, businesses and entrapeneurs did just fine, and innovation wasn’t “stifled.” But, Monsanto relies exclusively on the validity of patent law to make their moral case against farmers who save their seed:

Food, Inc. Fiction: The film states/suggests that the ability to patent plants and living organisms came into being only in the 1980s.

Truth: Plants have long been subject to provisions of U.S. patent law, and plants were patented long before the 1980s.

The film, Food, Inc., briefly raises the issue of patents on seeds in the United States. The patenting of seeds was first permitted under the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Since that time the law has developed as technology has advanced.

–Monsanto’s Food, Inc. Page

That just doesn’t cut it with me. The Plant Patent Act of 1930 specifically excluded the patenting of plants that propagate “sexually or tubers”, so technically Monsanto is wrong. Patenting of asexual varieties at least makes sense, since you’d have to get them from the creator every year anyway. But, the spirit of Monsanto’s defense is just wrong. Patents are destructive devices that corrupt the free market and inhibit innovation. Just look at what happened with the patenting of the cotton gin, airplanes, television, and most recently, software patents. These patents completely screwed up the market and hurt consumers. The Wright brother’s patenting of the “flying machine” so screwed up the airplane industry(which existed way before their patent), that by the time of WWI we had to purchase most of our airplanes from the French. This has been the consistent legacy of patent law.

And, what it takes in order to police the whole endeavor ultimately just infuriates people. The Monsanto “seed police” remind me of the Business Software Alliance that many software vendors entered into a few years ago. The BSA hasn’t been nearly as active recently as they used to be in prosecuting small businesses for software piracy. The reason is that software makers got a lot smarter about how to handle piracy, such as using product activation, so that they no longer have to go “bust” people in the community and generate so much bad publicity. Monsanto should learn that lesson. The RIAA and MPAA campaigns against users for downloading music should also be sufficient evidence to show any company that it doesn’t matter how good of an argument you make for the legality of patent law. The public just doesn’t buy it as being morally ok to come after people for “intellectual theft.” It just doesn’t fly.

Monsanto has also put their own guys in government, and in turn hired former government officials. This fuels suspicion of the company, and with good reason. If I’m their competitor it would infuriate me to know that former Monsanto executives were now holding key positions inside the USDA, FDA and EPA. Just like former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson became Treasury Secretary, it ruins any credibility on both sides. Just a cursory look into the matter shows that Michael Taylor, the VP of Public Policy(i.e. lobbyist) at Monsanto, was appointed to the FDA by Barack Obama. Bush also appointed Linda Fisher, another lobbyist for Monsanto, to the EPA. Michael Friedman also joined one of Monsanto’s subsidiaries after leaving his position as the head of the FDA. All of this reliance on government to get their job done is going to come back and bite them at some point. Trust me. It always does. Just ask GM and Chrysler.

If Monsanto wants it’s credibility back, it needs to once and for all stop relying on the government. Quit the legal tricks and worn out patent rhetoric and start leading the charge to re-empower small growers in a way that doesn’t require policing them. They control the product, so they control what it does. They should look into making seed that doesn’t germinate well in it’s second generation. This would give farmers a legitimate reason not to save seed, rather than just hitting them with this “i’ve got a patent, now pay up” balogne. Farmers wouldn’t save seed that is only going to give them a 30% germ. rate. Or if they do, they would still have to buy more to get a whole crop.

This is getting really long, so I’ll continue tommorrow. Until then, listen to Jeff Tucker’s excellent lecture on intellectual property:

Tucker – Evils of Intellectual Property:

Here are some of the things I took away from the movie, with commentary to follow for each:

• Big agriculture is in bed with the government way more than I thought. And I thought a lot.
• Modern technology has made food cheaper, but at a great cost to our health.
• Government subsidies have skewed the agricultural market way out of wack toward corn and soybean.
• Monsanto has sold it’s soul to the government for short term gain.
• Patents are just as evil as I thought.
• Organic products aren’t silly, leftist propaganda.  They are actually a good idea.
• If everyone could see where their meat comes from they would freak.

It’s become almost a given in our current system that big business is in bed with big government.  Indeed, the phrase “big business loves big government” couldn’t be more true when it comes to agriculture.  To be fair, it’s not all one-sided.  Government induces business to “play ball” just as much as business goes looking for government favors.  It’s all just disgusting.  The big agricultural conglomerates and meat processing companies have used the big hand of government to crush it’s competition through patents, increased regulations, land manipulation, etc.  Smaller producers – even the ones that are really good at what they do – can’t compete, because they don’t have the capital to fight the big boys in court.

This consolidation of companies has led to an ever increasing dependence on technology in order to keep up with demand.  It’s not like the old type of huge company, such as Standard Oil or U.S. Steel, that just flat out beat the competition by being better at what they did.  No, today it’s “win first through legislation and corruption and then figure out how to meet demand.”  So, meat processors do insane things like grow cows and poultry on so-called CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).  The animal’s natural food, like grass for cows, is not present.  They are fed corn as they stand knee-deep in their own feces.  It’s been known for a long time that when cows aren’t fed grass, they become very susceptible to disease, as well as skewing the bacteriological nature of their milk.  Basically, they turn into a petrie dish of all sorts of microscopic bad guys.  Combine that with the constant contact with their own feces and these CAFO’s become cess-pools for new strains of E.Coli and other acid-resistant bacteria.  That’s where your beef comes from folks.  Big Mac anyone?

I’ll follow up more tommorrow.  Netflix has this movie.  I encourage you to watch it.  As I said, you’ll have to ignore the green religion balogne and hard left government worship which is in most documentaries these days.  I also don’t agree with the strain of “government can solve all our problems” rhetoric that underlies much of the commentary, but that doesn’t mean the problems aren’t real ones.  It just means, as is always the case, that the government should get it’s nose out of producer/consumer interactions.  All in all, it’s simply a good idea to see where the stuff you put in your mouth comes from.