The interesting thing, is that it isn't Wonder Bread specifically, it's just what the legend grew up around. You say that about a name brand and people pay attention, but if you say it's possible with almost any loaf of bread and it's no longer impressive. The fact is, that you can smash almost any loaf of bread that comes off of your grocery store shelves down to almost nothing. I wouldn't suggest doing it unless you can get a loaf of bread for 100% free, but if you've ever dropped your mayonnaise on the bread, you know what I'm talking about.
Why can you do that? Because sliced bread is pumped full of air to make it lighter and fluffier and cheaper for the manufacturer. The benefit of light, fluffy bread is that kids love the stuff. Unfortunately, it's also packed with things we don't really want in our kids' bodies, much less our own. A brief search of the internet returns these as the ingredients in Wonder Bread, but you should know they're pretty similar to almost anything you're going to find on the shelves at your local grocery store:
My basic bread recipe has flour, sugar (small amounts), butter, yeast, salt, and eggs. In short, I'm skipping the high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, and all those chemically sounding ingredients that most of us don't know what they are. Besides that, I get the amazing smell of fresh cooked bread filling the house. There are very few things that smell that good.
Wonder Bread
Whole wheat flour, water, wheat gluten, high fructose corn syrup, contains 2% of less of: soybean oil, salt, molasses, yeast, mono and diglycerides, exthoxylated mono and diglycerides, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate, calcium dioxide), datem, calcium sulfate, vinegar, yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate), extracts of malted barley and corn, dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, calcium propionate (to retain freshness).
Ok, I'll admit that bread takes a long time. From start to finish our recipe took about 3 hours to make 10 loaves of bread. However, if you're not used to making bread, don't make more than 2 or 3 at a time. The recipe next week makes just that many.
If you're working long hours or holding multiple jobs, you might feel like you never have time, but everyone gets a day off now and again. If you go out and buy a 5 lb bags of flour, you can make 10 loaves in a little more time than it takes to make the three in the recipe. Then you take your finished loaves, wrap all but one in aluminum foil and saran wrap and stick them in the freezer. When the loaf you're using is almost gone, pop one out of the freezer and let it defrost while you're at work.
Homemade bread is different than what you're used to. It feels different in your mouth and it tastes very different than the stuff you pulled off your grocer's shelves. It's thicker; it's denser, and it'll fill you up a lot quicker than the stuff that's full of air. That means, if you're sending your son to school with a tuna fish sandwich, the one on homemade bread will keep him full longer than the one on supermarket brand bread. The same goes for that lunch you're making for yourself. No longer do you have to worry about being hungry an hour after lunch.
So, I went down to my grocery store and priced out a typical loaf of white or wheat bread. I'm not pricing in the sourdough, rye, or seven-grain you find at the market because we're not making that kind. You'll notice that those types of bread weigh a lot more than your loaf of white bread. I think you'll find that the loaves we make are going to be closer to the "special" breads than the regular.
My store has a generic brand that costs as little as $0.98 and the most expensive brand of typical bread cost $4.49 for a loaf. If I average out all the different brands, I get $2.68 as the average price of bread here in Arizona. Now let's talk about making our own bread and price it out.
My dad and I prefer to make bread with our hands. There are a couple reasons for this, but the most important is that you get to feel the bread. As my pastry chef once said, "God gave us the best whisks at the ends of our arms." He could literally whip a meringue with his bare hands too, but we're talking about bread. Raw bread dough feels so wonderful under my hands that I can't imagine making small batches in a mixer.
However, you can put it in a mixer and let it mix if you don't want to get your hands messy. Just make sure your mixer has a dough hook attachment. In older machines, those look like corkscrews and in new ones, they look like, well, hooks.
The reason you need a dough hook is because the usual beaters for your mixer will get stuck in the thick dough that bread requires. Seriously, if you don't have a dough hook for your mixer, mix it by hand because you'll burn out the mixer motor if you use beaters or a paddle.
Before you start, there are several parts of bread to consider, so instead of having a "Notes about ingredients" section, I'm going to discuss each ingredient that you might have questions about before we get to the recipe and method section next week.
Warm water might not seem like something you have to worry about, but surprisingly, you have to have the proper temperature of water to activate your yeast. On the back of my yeast packet, it lined out the temperatures you need to know:
The thing about yeast is that it's a living organism. To be technical, it's eukaryote, or a cellular organism with a nucleus which is similar to fungi (I'm still a Science major at heart). When you add it to warm water, it wakes up, but if you add it to water that's too hot, it dies and does nothing. For the 1/2 c. of water in this recipe, heat it in your microwave for about 10 to 15 seconds. If it's over 115, let it cool for a while until it is.
Yeast makes your bread rise. After you activate it, you add it to sugar. When yeast eats sugar, it releases CO2 bubbles. Those bubbles are what make your bread puff up. When you go to buy your ingredients you'll probably see at least two different brands. The most common are Fleischmann and Red Star, and they come in either jars or packets. Some people swear by one or another, but honestly, I go by price. When you're buying ingredients for your first recipe of bread, I highly recommend buying the packets. That's because yeast does go bad after a while, and the jars are more expensive for a single recipe. If you find yourself making bread over and over again, buy the jar and keep it in your fridge.
Flour is probably the most difficult choice you'll have to make in the process of bread making. There are so many questions you might ask yourself when you're in the baking aisle looking at five or six different brands of flours and the four or five types of flour they each have. Depending on your store there's whole wheat flour, naturally white flour, all purpose flour, rye flour, bread flour, not to mention the cake and pastry flour that you're going to ignore for bread making. Simple choice, for your first few attempts at homemade bread, use all purpose flour. All purpose flour is, just that, for all purposes. That means that you can use it for literally everything. It's also a lot less expensive than all the other kinds and it comes in generic brands. When you get the bread making down, you can start experimenting with other kinds of flour, but you're probably always going to want all purpose around when you're baking.
Butter is one of those things you keep hoping you can substitute. You can make your bread with canola oil, but it will taste much better with butter. Not margarine - butter. Use unsalted butter because you're already adding salt to this recipe, and you don't want to have too much salt in anything, especially bread.
Pans are probably right after flour in the high stress area when people start thinking about making bread. Here's a spoiler for you - you don't actually need a pan to bake bread. In fact, when you see the pictures we'll post next week, you'll see a full range of shaped loaves and loaves that were put in pans. If you don't have a loaf pan, you can just shape the loaf and put it on a cookie sheet, or heck, the oven rack. Just make sure you put some non-stick cooking spray on whatever you bake your bread on.
I was going to do this all in one week, but the process of making bread is long and has a ton of pictures included. Ergo, I'll post the recipe and method next week so that you can see each part of it. Goodness my house smells good right now.
What's your favorite bread? How did making it go? Questions? Comments?
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Before you start, there are several parts of bread to consider, so instead of having a "Notes about ingredients" section, I'm going to discuss each ingredient that you might have questions about before we get to the recipe and method section next week.
Warm water might not seem like something you have to worry about, but surprisingly, you have to have the proper temperature of water to activate your yeast. On the back of my yeast packet, it lined out the temperatures you need to know:
105º-115º yeast directly into the liquidNow, you might not know how hot your water is because you might not have a thermometer in your kitchen. Here's a hint at a future equipment entry: Go get one! I mean, I'm assuming you haven't gone and gotten all your bread ingredients yet, so just grab one in the cookware aisle when you do. If you can, get a digital one. It will make your life better in the long run.
120º-130º mix liquid into dry ingredients then add yeast
Yeast makes your bread rise. After you activate it, you add it to sugar. When yeast eats sugar, it releases CO2 bubbles. Those bubbles are what make your bread puff up. When you go to buy your ingredients you'll probably see at least two different brands. The most common are Fleischmann and Red Star, and they come in either jars or packets. Some people swear by one or another, but honestly, I go by price. When you're buying ingredients for your first recipe of bread, I highly recommend buying the packets. That's because yeast does go bad after a while, and the jars are more expensive for a single recipe. If you find yourself making bread over and over again, buy the jar and keep it in your fridge.
Flour is probably the most difficult choice you'll have to make in the process of bread making. There are so many questions you might ask yourself when you're in the baking aisle looking at five or six different brands of flours and the four or five types of flour they each have. Depending on your store there's whole wheat flour, naturally white flour, all purpose flour, rye flour, bread flour, not to mention the cake and pastry flour that you're going to ignore for bread making. Simple choice, for your first few attempts at homemade bread, use all purpose flour. All purpose flour is, just that, for all purposes. That means that you can use it for literally everything. It's also a lot less expensive than all the other kinds and it comes in generic brands. When you get the bread making down, you can start experimenting with other kinds of flour, but you're probably always going to want all purpose around when you're baking.
Butter is one of those things you keep hoping you can substitute. You can make your bread with canola oil, but it will taste much better with butter. Not margarine - butter. Use unsalted butter because you're already adding salt to this recipe, and you don't want to have too much salt in anything, especially bread.
Pans are probably right after flour in the high stress area when people start thinking about making bread. Here's a spoiler for you - you don't actually need a pan to bake bread. In fact, when you see the pictures we'll post next week, you'll see a full range of shaped loaves and loaves that were put in pans. If you don't have a loaf pan, you can just shape the loaf and put it on a cookie sheet, or heck, the oven rack. Just make sure you put some non-stick cooking spray on whatever you bake your bread on.
I was going to do this all in one week, but the process of making bread is long and has a ton of pictures included. Ergo, I'll post the recipe and method next week so that you can see each part of it. Goodness my house smells good right now.
What's your favorite bread? How did making it go? Questions? Comments?
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