Bread (and bikes)

[Patrick Moore]

Mostly bread. I just baked another batch, whole wheat, bolus after kneading but before baking was 54.6 oz. That made 2 moderately-sized loaves, far more than I and my daughter can eat in the 1-2 days before bread left out goes stale here in our dry climate. We eat flour tortillas and rice and pasta and potatoes, too, so we don't eat bread daily.

I've taken to freezing my bread after slicing it into more-or-less sandwich-thick slices, the nuking it briefly, just long enough to soften and not long enough to heat. I do something similar with tortillas, too; tho' usually heat both sides on little grill over gas burner until soft or heat on a cast iron griddle.

But what do you others do to keep bread fresh? Again, dry climate.

The freezing method works fine; the nuked results are near-fresh in texture and taste. But I'm curious about other possibilities.

Bike content" carried 15 lb of King Arthur stone ground "white" whole wheat flour home on the bike, along with much else. Don't usually buy KA or "white" whole wheat, but it was all left on the shelf at the time.

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

[Mat Grewe]

Are you using commercial yeast or sourdough starter as your leavening?  And what is the moisture content of the bread you are making?  Simply divide the grams of water used by the grams of flour.

I make sourdough bread with a fairly high moisture content in the loaf itself (70%) and bake it in a dutch oven, which develops a nice thick, crunchy crust.  That does a pretty good job protecting the loaf, and I put the cut side down on the counter.  That last a few days before the crust gets really hard, but the inside is still soft.  Sometimes after a few days I'll put the loaf in a sealed container (pyrex bowl with a lid) and that softens the crust up enough to make cutting easier.

I've heard of using bags like this, but have not felt the need to try them out.

I am in Minnesota/Wisconsin and although it is usually drier in the winter, it is still far more humid than your climate.  However you could try keeping the cut side down, making a loaf with a higher moisture content (especially since you are using whole wheat flour), and try building up the thickness of the crust.

Mat

Recently biked home with a wimpy 5 pounds of flour

[Philip Williamson]

Keep freezing it.
Toasting or simply leaving the bread on the counter works fine too.

Philip
Santa Rosa, CA

[Nick Payne]

For consumption on the second and third day after baking, I wrap my home-baked bread in beeswax-impregnated cloth and store it in the fridge. I only bake one fairly large loaf at a time, and between my wife and I that's enough for two or sometimes three days of lunches.

Nick

[Garth]

That's just in Patrick, there is just substitute for freshly baked bread. Myself I would leave whatever portion I'd eat for a day or 2, then freeze the rest the same day as baking. Don't wait until it starts going stale to freeze it. All frozen/canned food processors do their work with freshly cooked goods. I grew up a few blocks from a Libby's canning factory, with it's distinctive Corn Cob water tower. Every summer come harvest season local truck after truck would bring the beets, peas, sweet corn and carrots and such at peak ripe season. We'd walk down and get a dozen ears o' corn for literally pennies and wow was it great !  Since the cannery was so close, in the summer at night the "mischievous brothers" and I would go there and they'd start throwing these whoppin' huge carrots at each other....not to mention all the tomatoes in the shadows of the night while roaming about the back yards. Come to think of they were always propelling something, be it rocks, pine cones, apples and whatever they could get their hands on.... prolly because one of their parents was so coldly strict this was their only form of release from the constricting wrath of dictatorship from within the walls of their prison/home. Here's to you John, Matt and Christopher !!!! 

Back to baking and freezing though... my Mom growing was always making food to put in our deep chest freezer. She used to make these raisin filled pastry type cookies that were to die for. I've still never seen or heard of anything like them. She'd even do bone broths and soups for winter time. Oh she also made jams and jellies with fresh local fruits like Crabapples, Plums, Berries and Apples from a local orchard. I had most wonderful peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunches ! 

Isn't this the adventure of Life .... you just never know where It's going/happening. One minute you're baking bread and wondering how to store it .... the next you're in the midst of summer in a corn field... and for a one little moment you wonder "how did I get here ?" ..... and in the next breath ... "does it really matter ?" ..... heeheehee ... nope .... not one bit. You know .... I hear lots about "going on adventures ... go here, go there .... go go go ...... but with a keen eye ..... it's becomes obvious the "adventure" ... is "you" .... like a seed that sprouts all by Itself and on the instant ... "the World" appears in IT-Self-Celebratory-Magnificence.  Yes ..... this is IT, and IT is this. 

[Patrick Moore]

Thanks, all. It seems that freezing is the best method, given our climate and the large amount I like to make at 1 time, and our irregular (but often large) bread consumption. Freezing works well, as I said, with the after results of toasting or even judicious nuking much like that of fresh bread; certainly fresher than leaving it out for more than 24 hours.

I like a rather moist loaf. I am still using the 1 lb bag of Red Star yeast I bought from Costco a long while ago. Flour has been Bob's Red Mill bread flour (King Arthur "white whole wheat" was the only flour left at Sprout's 3 weeks ago, so I bought that on the chance that it might be my last option for a while), but others with even more experience say that as long as its decent quality flour, just buy what is cheapest with those criteria. My brother, even better than I, uses bulk Sprout's unbleached and WW flour, I think.

As to quality, my daughter prefers my bread to even the higher-end store loafs (loaves? Dwarfs? Hoofs?), so I guess I'm doing well enough. (Proud to say that my daughter grew up with home cooked scramble and fries for breakfast, and home made mac and cheese and chicken nuggets for dinner as a small girl, graduating on to more sophisticated but still home-made fare; she's a modestly accomplished cooker herself now, at almost-19.)

[Garth]

Oh sheesh ..... Let's try :  "That's just it Patrick, there's just no substitute for freshly baked bread."

[Patrick Moore]

We agree wholeheartedly. The question is, what gives the best results when you store more bread than you can eat fresh? The premise for the question is that I'm not going to bake fresh bread daily or even every other day. Freezing -- as you pointed out -- is often this next-best thing.

Patrick Moore, who remembers as a teenager eating his mother's frozen pound cake right out of the freezer (pound cake popsicles!).

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[Garth]

  Oh Yes ! The frozen pound cake .... and frozen zucchini and pumpkin quick breads .... and of course even cookies.  While I don't eat any of that anymore, I do freeze nice and very ripe bananas, peeled and left whole. Utter magnificence. I also refrigerate them after they get nice and ripe and they keep for at least a week. I They can get very dark on the outside and remain perfect inside, What I grew up with as a "ripe banana" , the yellow with a green tip, I cannot even touch anymore. Those once-in-a-great-while Dairy Queen treats of a banana milkshake/banana split would have tasted so much better with real ripe bananas !  Frozen grapes are awesome too, as is very ripe pineapple, but to get it that way you gotta know how to pick them and let them sit around for awhile until they ooze sweetness. 

The bananas and pineapple I cook with oatmeal, rice and masa flour(Maseca Tamal in particular) every day. Not to mention berries, apples, plantains, stone fruits and raisins. 

Back to bread though, I assume you're using a decent brand of freezer bags ? 

On Wednesday, April 29, 2020 at 12:32:42 PM UTC-4, Patrick Moore wrote:

Patrick Moore, who remembers as a teenager eating his mother's frozen pound cake right out of the freezer (pound cake popsicles!).

[Mat Grewe]

I should add, I used to make a lot of bread with commercial yeast, but now making bread (and pizza dough) almost exclusively for the past three years with sourdough starter as the leaven, I've noticed some interesting benefits over commercial yeast.  And yes, some are actually bike related.

-Sourdough stays moist and chewy—on the inside—longer than bread made with yeast.  A large part is likely due to the higher moisture content of the dough and longer fermentation process necessary when making sourdough, but the crumb does not get that same kind of dry, crumbly, cardboardy feel as it gets old.

-Some gluten free people can eat sourdough.  I have a friend who, if she eats gluten, even one bite, spends much of the next day in the outhouse...  However, she can eat a couple slices of sourdough and have absolutely no ill effects!  The fermentation process changes things somehow.  I'm sure there are different types of gluten intolerance, so try at your own peril.  My friend and her daughter did the research for their type of gluten intolerance (theirs is truly medically defined, not a self diagnosis) and thought it worth the attempt.  Needless to say, they love when I bring fresh sourdough to gatherings.

-I can eat way more sourdough and not get what I would describe as "bread gut".  If I eat too much bread made from yeast, I feel heavy and sluggish, especially when riding a bike, not so with sourdough.  I can eat half a loaf of sourdough for dinner and feel great!

-I don't have mechanical bread making devices (bread machine, stand mixer, etc.) and sourdough requires no kneading or fancy equipment.  A dutch oven helps, but is not necessary.

-You get a new friend.  Sourdough starter is alive and deserves a name; mine is Gertrude and a good friend she is to my tummy.  New friends are hard to come by these days, but fair warning, you do have to social distance your sourdough starter if you keep other fermented friends like kombucha...  (no joke, their good bacteria can interact and and cause issues)

Homemade bread in any capacity is great, but if anyone is curious to try sourdough and wants some simplified tips and recipes, PM me off list.  There is a lot online and it took some time to sift through what was a necessary step and what wasn't.  I like good and simple bread, but don't have the desire to be an artisan, which many online tutorials cater to.  I would rather ride a bike than geek out and babysit my bread.

Mat

Driftless Wisconsin

[Patrick Moore]

Matt: I'd be interested in learning more about making sourdough. I am interested largely for curiousity, as I like yeast bread just fine, but I'd be delighted to learn to make bread that tastes even better. I do have to say that I don't particularly care for the taste of store bought sourdough -- perhaps that should be "sourdough" as I guess that the real thing tastes better.

No kneading? I was thinking that sourdough might take too long for my patience; but the kneading takes 10 minutes, so perhaps this will offset it.

Thanks. On list, because I daresay that others will be interested in what you have to say.

Riv content: I should think that making sourdough is as relevant as carving your own spoon with a hatchet. 

Patrick Moore, who is very gluten tolerant and gets no gut from bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, or beer, and who one day will learn to make real french bread,  too.

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[Mat Grewe]

There are two kinds of store bought sourdough.  One is the true artisan style sourdough you get at artisan bakeries or some food co-ops, that is the kind I make.  The other is "sourdough" flavored sandwich bread, which I refuse to eat.

I'll type up a simplified how to tomorrow.  The gist is that it takes longer from start to finish and you do need to plan it out a day or two in advance (depending on the temperature of your house), but the actual hands on time per loaf is on par or less than yeasted bread (especially when knead the dough by hand).  Plus it isn't as messy (vs hand kneading), so clean up is easier.  However, there is added time feeding the starter, but if you only bake bread once a week or less, you can put the starter in the fridge so you don't feed it every day (again, I'll detail that out in a simplified way).  It feels like a lot at first, but after a few times it becomes second nature.

Riv content...  Flour is heavy, and the more you bake bread, the more you have to buy flour, and that flour has to get from the store to the house, and what better way than a basketed bicycle, and then you are hungry and need a snack, and seriously, sourdough is a great snack, especially when you come home, after said bike ride of course, to a house that smells of fresh bread, quite lovely that is.

Mat

Driftless Wisconsin

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[Patrick Moore]

Thanks, Mat; I look forward to learning (and perhaps eating).

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