Bread With Your Meal

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Do you regularly eat bread as part of your main meal?

  • Gotta have bread every meal!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Depends on the meal

    Votes: 31 68.9%
  • Take it or leave it

    Votes: 3 6.7%
  • Never. It's a waste of space.

    Votes: 11 24.4%

  • Total voters
    45
  • Poll closed .
No fair! They didn't have sourdough here. The warm multi-grain was pretty delicious though, still warm like yours. I was able to block it from jumping intoy cart though.

That's too bad, the sourdough and Italian were great!
 
No bread for me....

Never really cared for bread with my meal. We grew up having it with every meal, but I'd pass on it. Just seemed to fill me up too much and I'd rather have more salad or vegetables than bread.
 
I've been a bad boy. I've finally got my bread down again. It used to be great, and then, for a couple of years, I couldn't seem to get it to bake right. It would seem to rise properly, but when baking, would fall, resulting in very dense bread. The addition of Vital Wheat Gluten has resurrected my bread making skills. Unfortunately, that allows me to make yeasty, fresh bread at home. I made two loaves Saturday evening. Before morning, I'd had one slice, warm with butter. DW ate a full half of the first loaf.

I love freshly baked, yeasty bread with just the right amount of salt and sugar baked in (that woudl be 1/2 tsp. salt per cup of flour, and 3 tbs. sugar per cup of flour). It so good as toast with butter, or with a runny-yolk egg, or to make English muffins from the dough. I love its texture, and flavor with jam, or peanut butter, or both, to soak up egg yolk, or gravy, or broth. It's just so darn tasty. But though I made the evil stuff, I've eaten sparingly. Give me strength.

It was white bread, though a week before, I'd made whole wheat/white bread. My next loaves with be 100% whole wheat. I've go some great sourdough starter sitting in my fridge that I just recently fed. It started bubbling nicely. DW isn't crazy about sourdough bread though.

I wish I could have shared that last loaf with all of you. It was good enough to make me a proud bread-maker. After the drought of good bread from my oven, I just want to keep making it. Unfortunately, I can't see that as a healthy option.

Now that I make good bread again, it opens up my world to pizza crust, various multi-grain breads that I used to make, dinner rolls, pastries, etc.

It was a combination of DC and a friend who clued me in that cheap AP flour doesn't contain as much gluten as it did 13n years ago, and that more would have to be added to get my bread working again. The gluten did the trick.

I have some sunflower seeds in the cupboard, and some pecans. maybe I'll make a super-bread tonight, all multi-grain with nuts added. I've got whole wheat, rye, oatmeal, flax seed, and some bird seed (Red River Cereal - yum), sunflower seeds, and pecan bits. That's about a 7 grain bread, with two nuts when you figure the bird seed has multiple whole grains in it. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Tip, you must use 2 parts wheat to 1 part other grains combined for successful multi-grain bread.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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Love bread, and I love eating different ethnic meals with the different traditional breads that go with them .

Indian food - Naan
Greek - Pita
Italian - Italia bread/ Garlic Bread
Jewish - Challah
Mexican - Tortilla

---and the list goes on

Although I dont eat it with every meal, I do look forward to it, whether it be sopping up gravy, dipping it in sauces or soups ...
 
I don't ever remember my mother's pantry being as full as I keep mine. Of course she shopped weekly, and me, monthly. And she didn't have a freezer until the late 50's. Yet we always had great meals. :angel:
Isn't it amazing all of the conveniences we take for granted that not everybody had in our parent's and grandparent's day?
 
Just wondering...

Do you eat bread as part of your main meal on a regular basis?

Let's not count sandwiches. Also, if you have a dietary issue that prohibits eating bread, what did you do before that came into play?

I do not eat bread as part of my meal. I never really got into the habit. Not at home and not at a restaurant. My Mom and Dad did. So pasta - no garlic bread. Thanksgiving - no rolls. Easter - no hot cross buns. I always felt like I didn't want to use up valuable stomach space for bread when there were so many other goodies on the table.

What about you?

Take a second and complete the poll.


Only if the bread is really special. Otherwise I don't bother. Like you said too many other treats on the table.
 
Report on that "Super Bread":
1. Flavor - Excellent
2. Nutritional Value - Excellent
3. Texture - Quite heavy.

I used 8 cups whole wheat flour, with 1 cup each, buckwheat, Red River Cereal. The bread rose well enough initially, and I thought that this was going to be a great bread. However, I had to add about 2 cups AP flour to give it more elasticity before the initial rise. I put it into the bread pans (made 4.5 loaves worth), and placed them in a warm spot to rise. They didn't quite rise to double. I baked them and they fell. The bread is soft, very flavorful, and moist, but with a tight crumb, and fairly heavy.

So, in retrospect, I believe that I need to increase the gluten content to 3 tbs. gluten per loaf of bread, if I'm going to use such heavy grains as buckwheat and bird seed. Oh, There's also about a cup of sunflower seeds that were in the dough.

Back to the drawing board. White bread, easy-peasy. Multi-grain super bread, still working on it.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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Report on that "Super Bread":
1. Flavor - Excellent
2. Nutritional Value - Excellent
3. Texture - Quite heavy.

I used 8 cups whole wheat flour, with 1 cup each, buckwheat, Red River Cereal. The bread rose well enough initially, and I thought that this was going to be a great bread. However, I had to add about 2 cups AP flour to give it more elasticity before the initial rise. I put it into the bread pans (made 4.5 loaves worth), and placed them in a warm spot to rise. They didn't quite rise to double. I baked them and they fell. The bread is soft, very flavorful, and moist, but with a tight crumb, and fairly heavy.

So, in retrospect, I believe that I need to increase the gluten content to 3 tbs. gluten per loaf of bread, if I'm going to use such heavy grains as buckwheat and bird seed. Oh, There's also about a cup of sunflower seeds that were in the dough.

Back to the drawing board. White bread, easy-peasy. Multi-grain super bread, still working on it.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
As a lifelong bread maker (well, since I was a bored school kid on a miserable wet day and decided to experiment with Mother's cookery books) I find that whole wheat flour, even the "Strong" sort for bread making, makes a rather solid home made bread. Shop-bought wholemeal bread has all sorts of additives to make it lighter. I find that a proportion of unbleached white bread flour added to the whole wheat makes it lighter. My "daily bread" is made with half and half so I get the benefits and flavour of the whole wheat with the advantage of the white flour making the bread lighter. The other thing about whole wheat flour here (and it may be different in the US) is that there is "soft" whole wheat flour for baking cakes and things and "strong" whole wheat for bread making. The former does not make very good bread at all

I don't use extra gluten - in fact I'd never heard of doing it until I read about it on DC. Our "strong" bread flour, which mostly comes from Canadian wheat, has more naturally occurring gluten than your all purpose flour (which has more than our "plain" flour which probably explains why American cake recipes have larger amounts of raising agents in them than ours do). I believe you can buy strong bread flour in America (I have my spies!) Perhaps if you could get hold of some it might be worth an experiment?

Are you kneading the dough for long enough? Sometimes insufficient kneading can cause the bread to fall in the oven.

And then there are the old wives tales. It was dinned into me by mother and grandmother to be gently with the dough when putting it into the oven and not to bang the baking sheet or loaf tin down on the shelf or to slam the oven door, both of which were supposed to "knock the air out of the dough". As I have always followed these instructions to the letter I have no idea whether there's any truth in them but it doesn't do to take chances ;).

Better luck with your next effort.
 
The organic whole grain wheat flour that I buy at the health food store (and sometimes it's available at supermarkets) comes in hard/bread and soft/pastry.
 
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