Mike likes fresh-baked bread and since he has been working so hard on painting the house I thought I would treat him with a couple loaves of home-made whole wheat bread. I located an old recipe, one that I used to bake quite often when the boys were little, and got started.
Everything went great during the mixing, kneading, and first rise. Above is the dough just after I turned it out of the bowl, following the first rise. Looks great! I then cut it in half and rolled it up into two balls:
These got to rest for 10 minutes, then I used the rolling pin to roll the dough out and get rid of any bubbles, formed two nice loaves and put them in the bread pans:
A little while later is when I first noticed that one loaf seemed to be rising faster and bigger than the other. Hmmm. Well, I didn't worry too much, though, my loaves are never exactly even. I figured the smaller loaf would catch up during their time in the oven. Well, you can imagine my shock when I opened the oven door halfway through the baking time to find this:
That loaf in the back is MUCH taller than the other! And even the "smaller" loaf is huge! I just started laughing because these loaves are nothing short of monstrous!
Here's the bigger of the two loaves (above) just out of the pan. Look how much taller it is than the pan, ha ha ha! Below is the smaller loaf, sliced up in readiness for the freezer. We had expected to find huge holes (bubbles) in the bread, which would explain why the loaves were so big, but just one loaf had only a small bubble at the top.
In the back of the photo is what's left of the larger loaf. We've eaten the rest of it already! It's delicious -- the same yummy wheat flavor I remembered and had a hankering for (very much like my Mom's bread).
Granted, it was difficult to fit into the toaster, but wouldn't it make great (if ginormous) tomato sammies or french toast??
Posts
4 comments:
Ok, you win! I have never had a loaf come out that large! Did you double the yeast or something? Maybe you used self rising flour? Or did you double the recipe and should have made four loaves? Or maybe it was just a miracle!?! Ha Ha. Love you, Mom
Never tried bread making - but that is EXTREME bread making!
That looks SOOOO good!
Mmmmm, I can smell the bread baking now.
Your bread DID get a little out of hand - but its still gorgeous! And you made it by hand! While I failed to make it in a bread maker! How lame is that. But you will be happy to know that we've now figured it out (yeah, I guess you have to clean the crud out from under the blades after each use or it gets frozen in place - go figure).
Post a Comment