Easy homemade bread baking
photo by Scott Lepage
Winter is the perfect time for home-baked bread. It’s not hard to do, but it can be time-consuming. The smell that fills your home and the taste makes the effort worthwhile. I’ve included three easy recipes that will round off your bread-baking repertoire. The monkey bread is so simple that kids can help you make it.
Italian Bread
1 cup water, warmed
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons dry yeast
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg white
2 tablespoons cornmeal
Add the ingredients into a bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Turn on the bread machine to dough setting. Watch for the first bit, and add flour as needed to get good dough (elastic and not sticky). Get a cookie sheet ready by lightly oiling with olive oil, and sprinkle on cornmeal. Form the dough into a loaf, and set on cookie sheet with a tea towel to cover until doubled in size. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Cut slits diagonally in the loaf with a sharp knife. Brush with egg white. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown. When you knock the bottom of the bread, it will sound hollow. — Nancy, Virginia
Monkey Bread
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 packages of buttermilk-biscuit tubes
1 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter a Bundt pan. Mix the 1 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon together. Set aside 1/2 cup of this mixture for later. Put the rest in a ziploc bag. Take three packages of buttermilk-biscuit tubes (10 per roll), and cut each roll into four pieces. Drop roll pieces into 1/2 cup cinnamon-sugar mixture in a plastic zippered bag, and coat a few at a time. Drop the sugarcoated pieces into a well-buttered Bundt pan (don’t squish roll pieces when placing them in the Bundt pan). Put 1/2 cup of the leftover sugar-cinnamon mix and whatever’s left in the zippered bag and 1/2 cup packed brown sugar and 1 cup of butter (two sticks) into a small saucepan. Bring this mixture just to a boil; take off heat right away. Carefully drizzle over the roll pieces. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes. Cool slightly in an upright position, and then tip the pan over onto a large platter to remove the monkey pull-apart bread. The caramel will ooze, so be sure to use a platter with a lip so the caramel doesn’t pour off the plate. Pull apart the pieces, eat and enjoy. Great served warm or cold. — Ellen, New York
Lavash
2 cups warm water
1 tablespoon honey
2-1/2 teaspoons yeast
4-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 egg white
1/4 cup sesame seeds
oil
Whisk the warm water with honey. Sprinkle in yeast, and let stand 10 minutes or until frothy. Stir in 4 cups flour and salt to make a soft dough. On a lightly floured surface, knead eight to 10 minutes, adding enough flour to make a smooth, elastic dough. Place in a lightly greased bowl, turning to grease all over.
Cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in bulk (approximately 45 minutes). Punch down the dough. Divide into eight pieces; roll each into a ball. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.
Gently stretch or roll each piece into a 12-inch-by-8-inch oval. Brush with egg white, then sprinkle evenly with sesame seeds. Place on foil-lined or lightly oiled baking sheet. Bake at 400 F for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden and beginning to crisp. — Donna, California
Posted by Sara Noel
on January 13 2010. Filed under Frugal Cooking.Sara Noel owns Frugal Village, LLC and is a nationally syndicated columnist with Universal Uclick. Bio, Follow me on Twitter, Join us on Facebook
Thank you for these great recipes! I LOVE bread so I know I’ll try these for sure. I’ve been on this Pantry Challenge this month, it’s where you only eat from your pantry and not go shopping. Well we’ve been eatting better then ever, because I am having to find new recipes to keep using everything I have. It’s been fun, educational and the whole family is liking me cooking more.
1These recipes will fit in very nicely with the rest.
Thanks again for sharing!
.-= Laura ´s last blog ..Ten Ways to Save in 2010 | Lifetime Moms =-.
There is absolutely nothing better than fresh, warm homemade bread with butter. My kids love it. I love making bread and it is easier than most people think. I do not use a bread machine. I love the feel of kneading bread. It is relaxing. There are, however, recipes for bread that don’t need kneading. I keep a batch in my fridge and just pull out a batch and bake it every night for dinner. Can’t get much better than that. We all need to get back to basics. Happy baking!!!
2Nothing beats the smell of fresh bread being baked. Just thinking about it reminded me of walking into Grandma’s house. Might have to give the Italian bread a try tomorrow!
3.-= Matt SF´s last blog ..Visualizing How the Things You Own, End Up Owning You =-.
Love your bread recipes. Nigella Lawson has a great whole-grain bread recipe where you literally just mix everything, including the yeast, put it in a loaf pan and bake. No waiting for dough to rise; no kneading. It’s called Lazy Loaf, and it’s from Nigella Express. I make it all the time. The recipe is also printed here: http://big-chef.com/tsir/?p=331.
Carol
4http://frugallivingpress.blogspot.com/
.-= Carol´s last blog ..A washer in the living room =-.
A friend gave me some Amish bread sourdough starter two years ago and we’ve been baking our own bread ever since. The first few loaves were flops (too dense, didn’t rise right, etc.), but after that I learned how to get the fickle sourdough starter-yeast to rise properly in our coastal climate and there’s been no going back. It costs us around $.65 cents per loaf for 100% whole honey-wheat and maybe $.40 cents for Amish bread (a slightly sweet, chewy white bread). I don’t even need to use a recipe anymore … I make it so often I just know the recipes (though sometimes I experiment with a new recipe … with mixed results).
Basically, yeast is like people. It’s in no hurry to get out of bed and start bustling about making your bread rise when it’s cold. If you want sourdough bread in January without using commercial yeast or a bread machine and you keep your house a frugal 65 degrees, you’ll want to mix up tomorrows bread today and let it take it’s time rising in one of those cheap covered plastic bowls overnight. Once summer comes, you can just mix it together in the morning and eat it at supper. Because relative humidity and atmospheric pressure vary from location to location (affecting water, flour, and kneading), it’s better to experiment with several recipes until you find a couple that work for you. Then, use those recipes all the time for your primary baking.
5I recently discovered the joy of making homemade bread. My favorite to make is Challah – it uses so few ingredients and is quite frugal to make. Like the commenter above, I don’t use a bread machine or a mixer. It’s fun to do it all by hand and it gives you huge muscles.
6Actually … I -do- use the dough cycle on the bread machine once in a while if I spaced out and forgot to start Amish bread the night before. I try not to, but given the choice between “cheater” fresh bread for supper in 2 hours or a quick trip to the store to buy the overpriced artisan breads I crave, I think the electricity to make dough is the lesser of two evils
I never use it to bake, however. A real oven does a much better job, and you can bake it right alongside your roast or whatever else you’re baking.
I don’t use the bread machine for whole wheat dough, however, as it just never comes out right. I mix the dough rather wet, let it rise on it’s own for two (or more) days, then use half one day, half the next, adding enough flour to firm it up. I can’t do that with the Amish bread, however, as it quickly outgrows the confines of it’s bin after a day and overflows all over the counter, down the cabinet, and across the floor like some Saturday night B-grade horror movie. Actually, the whole wheat will do that too, it just takes a couple more days.
I always see gently used bread machines at the Salvation Army for $3-$4 dollars.
7I love making and baking bread, everyone should try it!
8Here’s a link from the archive for hamburger buns, English muffins and biscuits.
9http://www.frugalvillage.com/2009/03/13/buns-make-for-frugal-weekend-meals/