Making Homemade Bread is Well Worth My Time

Bread Baking: Worth the Time?

We love having fresh baked rolls at dinner around here (and the bread is eaten the next day for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and if we're lucky some may make it to the next night's dinner). I bet we make bread every week, sometimes 2-3 times in one week.  See my recipe and pics for my favorite bread HERE.

I think the smell of bread baking is one of the best scents in the world.  I imagine if heaven has an scent, break baking might be one of them!  And the flavor of fresh baked bread is much better than store bought any day!  With the price of bread at the store these days, I am sure it's more economical to make fresh bread than to purchase it and I know it's healthier! My bread has no chemicals or preservatives - just flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast! And I just personally enjoy making it and really that's the point! :)

So we agree? Homemade bread versus buying dinner rolls or bread at the store: the smell is better, the flavor is incomparable, it's healthier for your body and your pocketbook.  But who has time to bake fresh bread in this hectic busy modern society?  My bread machine is running right now as I type this article in the next room (now granted most people don't have a full kitchen at their work, but we can get into that later).

It took me all of 8 minutes to put the ingredients into the bread machine and hit start!  And that included a 5 minute conversation with my mom who I called to make sure it was okay to use a little bit of all purpose flour with my bread flour to get a full 3.5 cups.  (It is and she said all purpose flour was all they had until marketers started pushing "bread flour" during the bread machine craze of the 1990s...I'll do some more research on flours later.)

Less than 8 minutes to get the dough started with a few extra moments to check the consistency (this recipe is almost always perfect for me) and 90 minutes for the bread machine to do it's part of actually creating the dough.  After your 8 minutes of labor, you could just set the breach machine to knead and bake the bread. I don't prefer the thick dense loaf my machine makes, so this next part is purely up to how much time you have or want to spend with your bread.

After the bread machine does it's thing on the dough cycle for 90 minutes (actually I forgot about it so it rested & waited on me for probably 10 to 15 more minutes. It's bread, it forgives.) I turned out my dough onto a lightly floured surface. I so love the Pampered Chef silicon mat - I can use it knowing it's clean, dump off the flour, rinse it, throw it in the dishwasher and BAM! So happy I went to the one PC party ever with my friend Gina!

So I knead and shape the dough for about 10-15 minutes. You can just knead it, separate it into 2 balls, shape them, and throw them down on a baking stone. Or divide the 2 balls into 2 greased loaf pans (silicone is awesome, glass is very good, I don't prefer metal pans though I have a few should I need them).  I like to make about 30-40 mini balls and place them altogether into muffin pans, loaf pans, or glass bakeware. This yields bunches of dinner roll-ish size bread rolls which tends to disappear faster than when I just made a boxy loaf or even a pretty round style bread.

After my little dough balls are in the bakeware, I lightly brush them with olive or canola oil then sprinkle with kosher salt and crushed, dried herbs. Today I used basil one one batch and chocolate mint on another and one just with salt.  {Note to self: Next time use sugar and chocolate mint on a pan!} Now it's time to rise! Time and location will vary. I have my oven set to warm (about 170 degrees) and will leave the bread in there until time to bake (in this case about 2 hours)!

Bake at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes or so! Remove from oven, allow to cool for a few minutes, remove from pan and allow to cool on cooling rack. Or eat it while it still burns your finger tips! Either way is fine by me! :)

So my labor time was 18 minutes. Machine time 90 minutes.  36 rolls for $1!  YAY! And just wait till ya taste it warm from the oven and slathered in butter. I just ate a late night snack of a roll, broken open, smothered in butter, and liberally sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.  Hmmm, it'll make ya wanna smack your mama! (As they say). :)