Lesson Learned From The Great Bread Experiment

For those of you who have been following us, you know I have embarked on a mission to find some good bread recipes. Making almost anything at home is cheaper but it is also safer because you can eliminate all of those unknown preservatives and other artificial things, many of which are known to be unhealthy for you. In our case, it is also ensures that there is no danger of traces of tree nuts.

Well, if you read my posts about the first two loaves of bread I made, white and whole wheat, you will find similar reviews. The overall appearance and flavor was not bad but both were way more dense than what I was looking for in a sandwich bread and you could really taste the flour in both. When I got to honey wheat and had the same result even though the recipe came from a different cookbook, I knew the problem was me.

I have done plenty of baking, but it had always been desserts, many times from mixes, or savory dishes. I had no idea how to figure out what I had done wrong. Did I knead them too much, too little or not get the yeast active enough? I was pretty sure I had followed all those directions. The kicker to me was that I had used nowhere Near the amount of flour called for in the recipes, so how in the World did they taste like four?

Finally, as I was looking through a magazine on homemade breads (more on that later), a woman commented in her article about not packing the flour. Well, I looked at the recipes. They all said X cups of flour. There was no note about sifting the flour or anything like that. However, that seemed to be the most likely source of the problem so when I made her bread, which turned out to be Delicious, I stirred the flour before measuring it.

Lesson learned: stir or loosen the flour before measuring, at least for bread.

So I guess now I have to go back and retry the other recipes with the corrected amount of flour. I'll let you know how they turn out.