Eight Acres

I haven't shared my bread recipe before, I think because I was still refining it, and then I memorised it, so I didn't really need to write it down!  Also, I'm hopeless at following recipes, so I forget that other people want to use them.  This bread is a "soaked" flour recipe.  This means that you add some kefir or yoghurt to slightly ferment the dough before baking, but it does not rely on wild yeast or a starter like sourdough.  It takes longer than a standard bread recipe, but does not require any "dough conditioners". Soaked flour bread in a bread maker 3 1/4 cup flour (wholemeal wheat, spelt etc, it will rise better if you add some white flour due to the gluten content) about 1/2 cup seeds - sunflower, chia, hemp etc about 370 mL of water (this is why recipes are a problem for me, you just get used to what the dough needs to look like, this will vary with the flour you use and the amount of seeds) 1 Tbsp (i.e. a splash) of kefir or yog...

Occasionally we feel like pizza, be we don't like takeaway pizza because we don't really know what's in it or on it and we usually end up feeling ill after eating it.  Homemade pizza is a bit of work, its very messy when we make it (because we usually make a few at a time because when you're cutting up all those toppings you may as well make more than one), there always seems to be flour all around the kitchen when we've finished, but its worth it for all that delicious pizza. I've experimented with a few different bases.  I used to use a simple homemade pastry, which was a nice thin base, but then I started baking my own bread , and now we use the same recipe to make the pizza bases.  I shared my bread recipe recently on Wholefood Mama's blog , for the pizza bases I leave out the sunflower and chia seeds, but I do use some wholemeal flour, as we like the flavour.  One batch of dough makes four pizzas, so we can have pizza for lunch for a few days.  ...

As you know, I decided I wanted to stop buying bread, and back in April I started baking my own.  I dabbled in sourdough in May and then found a great "soaked" flour recipe that worked and I've  stuck with it ever since .  We haven't brought any bread since April!  I use a bread maker to mix and rise the bread, and over winter I was using the woodstove to bake the bread.  I had got that method perfected, but now its warmed up too much to light the fire inside, so I had to find another way to cook my bread. BBQ bread I tried the breadmaker again and I just wasn't happy with it.  The bread doesn't seem to cook properly and the tin is such a stupid size, you end up with weird tall slices of bread that don't fit in the toaster!  Next we tried the BBQ (a Weber BBQ that we use all summer to cook everything from sausages to roast, pizza and chocolate pudding).  I say "we" because the BBQ is husband-territory.  Not that I don't know how to...

Back in April I wrote that I wanted to stop buying bread, and so far we haven't bought any more bread.  We have suffered through my sourdough attempts, and Farmer Pete has made some white bread from a packet, but we haven't bought any bread!  And recently I have got into a routine and settled on a bread recipe that I'm very happy with. rising..... It is based on the recipe in the e-book "Is your flour wet", which is available free from Kitchen Stewardship . 12 to 24 hours before I'm going to cook the bread I set up my bread maker bowl with 330mL of water, 1 Tbs of olive oil, 2 Tbsp of kefir and one tsp of honey.  I mix into that 1 and a quarter cups of wholemeal wheat flour, 1 cup of white bakers flour and 1 cup of wholemeal spelt flour, and a bit scoop of chia seeds (I know that its usually really important to weight the flour accurately, but it doesn't seem to matter fro this recipe).  My ratios (other than flour and water) are a little differe...

I came home from the sourdough and fermented food workshop and I wanted to try to make my first sourdough loaf right away, before I forgot what to do!  Why am I so keen on sourdough?  Well its the traditional method of making bread that was used before "bakers yeast" was isolated.  It can be made from only flour, water and sourdough starter, so is a very sustainable method as long as flour is available.  Because the flour is fermented for 12-24 hours before cooking, this allows the enzyme phytase to break down the phytic acid in the grain (phytic acid prevents mineral adsorption), it also allows microbes to begin to digest the nutrients so that they will be more available.  (Although some of the science is debatable, and confusing, I believe that soaking grains and flour prior to cooking/baking has improved my digestion, see more here ). The sourdough that we made at the workshop was HEAVY!  And I know that it was a really HEALTHY heavy, but I can't se...

Continuing my review of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats , this was such a huge chapter for me, I want to review it by itself. See the other parts of my review - introduction , mastering the basics , more chapters .... The main idea is that grains and legumes require careful preparation to ensure that the nutrients are completely available.  This means soaking and fermenting overnight, or at least several hours, and no quick boiling methods!  It also includes sprouting the grains first. I've always known that I had trouble digesting grains, but I didn't understand why.  I tried eating gluten free, but it didn't help, so I went back to eating bread and flour again.  I tried eating brown rice, but I never liked it.  I've never really enjoyed beans/legumes, they always make me feel overfull.  With all this in mind, I was very keen to try the suggestions in this chapter. Whole grai...

As much as I try to include real food in our life, we keep buying bread from the supermarket.  Every time I buy bread I think "I should really be making this", but still nothing changes. The main problem with bread from the supermarket is all the unnecessary ingredients.  The only bread that we ever buy is a decent brand, but it often contains soy flour and a huge list of ingrediants.  And now the govt has legislated that all bread must contain folic acid.  While I think we should all get our vitamins, I would prefer to get mine from natural sources, rather than so called "fortification" of other foods. For a long time I had this idea that if I was going to make bread myself, I should make the best possible bread. I felt bad using bread mix, white wheat flour, bakers yeast or a bread maker with a teflon bread tin, as I wasn't producing the best possible bread for our health.  But this has caused a state of paralysis where I just keep buying bread beca...