The Yeast Also Rises

If you've been involved in the cooking/self-sufficient/money-saving blogosphere at all, then you've heard of the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If you haven't, then you probably won't find my post to be too redundant, because this bread-making method has become HUGELY popular amongst home bakers. Why? It's so easy. Like, you'll-never-buy-bread-again-because-this-is-stupid-easy.

The general premise is that you mix all of the ingredients together, let it rise for 2 hours, then dump the whole bowl in the fridge. You break off hunks of dough when you feel like having fresh bread. No kneading. Let me repeat: NO KNEADING. No drawn out marathons of rising and punching down bread, and it is even faster than bread machines. And the taste? Comparable to Panera Bread or Atlanta Breads, except at a tiny fraction of the cost. The only special equipment you'll need is a bread stone and a pizza peel, but the recipe I'll discuss here doesn't require either.

I started experimenting with the recipes (summary found here) just before Christmas so I could serve fresh crusty breads with soups and pasta for our guests. I got a very favorable response (what? you're saying my grandmother was biased? pshhhh.) and then I tried my hand at rosemary herb rolls--SO tasty! All using the base recipe.

For the last 2 weeks, we've been eating homemade whole wheat sandwich bread. The basic ingredients are:

1 1⁄2 tbsp granulated yeast (1 1⁄2 packets)
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp salt
1/2 cup honey
5 tbsp neutral-flavored oil, plus more for greasing the pan
1 1⁄2 cups lukewarm milk
1 1⁄2 cups lukewarm water
6 2⁄3 cups whole wheat flour

I dump all of this into my stand mixer with the dough hook attachment and let 'er rip for a minute or two. I will say that the one real trick is to microwave the milk and water for 1 minute, just to take the chill off. The little yeasties need a warm environment to wake up in, but if it's too hot, they'll die.

And that's it! Let it sit covered with a towel for 2 hours to rise, and stick it in the fridge until you're ready to bake. I've been mixing up the dough after Joe goes to bed and popping it in the fridge just before I go to bed myself.


I like to transfer the dough to another bowl, mainly because I use my stand mixer pretty frequently. My aunt gave me this large ceramic bowl a few years ago for Christmas because it belonged to my grandmother. She used it to make eggnog in, but since I don't really go for the nog, I figure it would get more use as my dough bowl.

The dough can stay in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, and you can even freeze it in chunks. I haven't tried that yet, but I'll let you know how it goes if I do. When you're ready to bake, break off a chunk and shape it into a loaf. As I mentioned before, at this point you can shape the loaf on a pizza peel dusted with cornmeal and then toss it into a hot oven directly onto a bread stone, but for uniform sandwich slices, I use a loaf pan:

Because I'm a health dork, I like to sprinkle wheat germ on top of the loaf for some added Vitamin E and fiber.

Let the dough sit in the pan for an hour and 40 minutes to rest (may or may not rise some more). I like to set out a loaf just after breakfast, that way it's rested, baked, and cooled just in time for sandwiches at lunch.

Another trick for the perfect crust is to set an empty pan on the lowest rack in the oven and pour a cup (I use a cup and a half) of hot water into it just as you're putting the bread in. The steam gives a nice crunchy crust and keeps everything moist and yummy. Then sit back and enjoy the awesome smell for the next 50-60 minutes while the loaf bakes (at 350).

And there you have it. Simple, tasty, cheap homemade bread. It literally takes less effort to make this every few days than it does to pack up and head off to the store. There are probably a few tweaks to make this even healthier, but I haven't read the sequel Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day yet. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my from-scratch sandwiches and toast (tastes awesome with my pumpkin butter) and I'm trying to see how long I can hold out before breaking down and heading to the grocery store. When that finally happens, it will be for more flour, trust me.

"Closety"

I started this blog to discuss topics that I found interesting, like gardening, cooking, and kids. I understand that these topics automatically turn off a large portion of my potential readership (including most of my close friends) because they can be considered "boring." I think this post might make my posts about grass look downright thrilling to that demographic.

We're talking closets today, folks. As part of my New Year's resolutions, I swore to get organized because we've lived in this house for over a year and a half and still had unpacked boxes stashed in the closets. Now that Joe is getting older (read: has more stuff) and I'm exploring this whole homemaking arena, we need to actually use our closets for closety purposes.

I hit up 2 separate Bed, Bath & Beyonds and 2 Targets (otherwise known as The Greatest Store Ever) and stocked up on coated wire "organizers," plastic storage bins, and some cute canvas box-like thingies. I want to point out that while we actually have a lot of storage space in our house (the master closet is bigger than my office), the builder didn't really consider usage while designing the house. For example, all of our cabinet shelves are SUPER tall and really deep, which makes it impossible to access stuff that isn't right up front on the lower shelves without monkeying up on the counters. What's the point of that? But that's for another post.

Anyway, I know that I'm a giant dork for being so happy about this, but I FINALLY organized our master closet, previously known as The Pile With a Door:

Now, this is a big deal because we are currently living without dressers (we've picked them out, but are financing other home projects first. Plus, hello, our master closet is gigantic, why buy furniture?). You can't see around the corner where all of Bill's stuff is, but the point of the pic is to show that we've finally found a use for the upper 2 shelves (the many boxes of holiday gear). You see those 2 big tubs on the floor? One of those was OVERFILLED with my clothes that I packed up in MD and HADN'T TOUCHED until last week. Needless to say, there are many bags of stuff sitting in my car waiting to be dropped off at the women's shelter.

Ah. Cathartic.

Now, as a response to this post from my partner-in-gardening-crime, I'd like to share my cleaned-up pantry:

Look at all the organizers! Again, this pantry is poorly designed for a myriad of reasons, but we've found a configuration that will work for now. It's actually looking downright bare at the moment, thanks to a frenzy of holiday baking and tossing out ingredients that were way past their prime. I'm excited about the home-canned jars on the middle shelf and I hope that next year I can dedicate a whole shelf to homegrown, home-canned goodies.

In my dream kitchen, I'd have one of those appliance garages, but this hall closet across from the pantry is the next best thing, considering my growing collection of bulky kitchen gear:

I know, I know. BOOOOOORING!! But look, it's literally 0 degrees outside, the holidays are over, my stuff is rarely organized, and this blog is supposed document how I spend my days, regardless of how mind-numbingly uninteresting they may be.

Freezer!

Behold the awesome!

This, my friends, marks a new day in my kitchen, even though it is technically in the garage. All of the baking, meal assembling, and baby food making that I do can now actually be preserved long term! Probably the greatest Black Friday purchase we could have made.

Marvel in the energy-starryness of it all! I no longer need to worry about stuffing everything we harvest into an already crammed side-by-side freezer (hate!).

I haven't even had time to pull the tape off of it or set up the lovely shelves (so many!) into the door, but I had to christen it with what will be our Christmas dinner in a few weeks:

Bask in the 20 cubic feet of glorious zero-degree air! That is a giant pork loin, friends. Look at it just languishing in there like a teenager in a rented prom limo. No longer are you forcing me to rearrange every thing in the door of my crummy tiny freezer every time I try to close it!

I don't usually get this excited about appliances, but I'm a little jazzed about this one.

Fruit flies, don't bother me!

*I'm working on a few posts about recent activities around the ranch since we got home from our trip (including an absent Mutt Monday--sorry, gotta upload the photos), but in the meantime this is a post I started before we left.



This guy.
Who does he think he is? Why does he think it's cool to invite 30 or so of his best friends to come and keep me company in my kitchen? (FYI, the google images search for this guy is going to give me nightmares.)

The ugly truth about this whole organic/crunchy/homegrown/diy lifestyle that we're trying to lead is that much of what we do around the kitchen draws these little critters like...well...flies. We've got tons of kitchen scraps from making everything from scratch (eggshells, peels, veggie refuse, etc.) We use those scraps in our compost pile, which gets started in our cute little kitchen compost crock. We have a 9-month-old who sprinkles little bits of food ALL OVER THE PLACE when he eats. Seriously, I found a cheerio in one of my socks.

Basically our kitchen is the holy grail for fruit flies. This often leads to me keeping the windows shut tighter than Fort Knox, but every once in a while a beautiful afternoon breeze will tempt me into opening, ever so slightly, one of the kitchen windows.....then BAM. Dozens of fruit flies.

And guess what, folks? You can't smash them. Not only do they move at a hauntingly slow pace and in unpredictable floaty pattern, they are so darn small and light that they are normally gently pushed out of the way by the air current I make as I frantically try to crush them with whatever is handy. So what's the solution? Trapping them.
This was my first attempt at a trap, made from an old salad dressing jar, some chardonnay (I'm more of a pinot grigio girl), and dish detergent. The theory is that the bugs lean in to drink the wine and are poisoned by the soap. Or something. They mostly slip in and drown, which is fine by me.
The next method I tried was suggested by my friend, Lacey. Similar 3-ingredient set up, this time with a mason jar, apple cider vinegar, and a rolled up piece of paper. The idea is that the little idiots fly merrily down the cone and into the jar, and then freak out a bunch when they can't figure out how to get out. More drowning, more satisfaction on my part.
I found that a recycled page from one of my freelance jobs worked nicely. It was a 5th grade math workbook that I proofread. Combining my old hatred for fractions with my hatred for fruit flies? Sheer beauty.

As nice as these traps look on my counter, I'd really rather not need them at all. Does anyone out there have an end-all-be-all solution for these nasty house guests?

*Update: upon our return from Thanksgiving, it appears as if we had won the war. Lots of casualties, no live hostages. Yes!