Jeff Stahler for April 01, 2020

So that’s why we couldn’t find any yeast for sale. Oh well, I can make wild-caught sour dough… and we’ve got plenty of TP.

I thought it was the top of t rump’s head. Silly me.

What is the simplest bread you can make? I like Navajo fry bread. You can make it in a hogan, so it’s got to be simple.

Google it and see.

Of course if you can make bara brith instead, by all means go with that.

Death cheeto’s brain continues to swell with pride at the superb job he’s doing. Note the Orange in the Pic.

Try making Blaa Bread. it’s quite good.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20180205-how-waterford-blaa-changed-breakfast-in-ireland

https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/food-drink/blaa-bread-irish-recipe

Today I’m going to try Eastern European style grey bread and pumpkin bread.

Unless you’ve baked bread before, use a very simple recipe. I’ve had many catastrophes trying fancy recipes.

Make a “sponge” and let the yeast really grow for several hours. Save some of the sponge with more flour and sugar for a starter, refrigerate it after a few hours. This saves having to buy packaged yeast.

Let the dough rise twice before baking. The art of making bread is somewhat a lost art, generally. My grandmothers made their own bread on a daily basis. They passed it on to my mother, and then on to me. My bread can’t compare to theirs, however.

Fixing up the house, gardening some, lots of loafing of the non-baking type.

Some of the stats are scary, are they crustworthy?

There is no knead (for) bread.

If… there is anything good going thru this.. it is that we can survive without restaurants and cooking at home refreshes skills long thought lost.

It’s the yeast we can do…

Well, this does explain why yeast is suddenly in short supply. I’ll have to make up some starter, again.

I’ve baked our bread for decades. I started when I was working for a health insurance company; management tried to make the job as difficult as possible, and I’d come home, mix up a batch of bread, and beat people up. Smack, slap, punch. One for you and one for your ugly brother. Now, I don’t have nearly the frustration, so I use a bread machine. When the loaves are about 2/3 done I put in a meat thermometer and bake until they reach 190-F.

At this point, I’d rather watch cooking shows than news or much of anything on the mainstream networks. Except I have to watch NCIS and Young Sheldon. Hubby and I have never watch one of those reality bases shows. So don’t know about much of anything else. Much rather read.

Last year we made home-made French bread in the bread maker (we have a smaller kitchen.) Made two loaves. We used on of the loaves to make garlic bread. Kids loved it.

Try finding flour.

I tried and failed

Have a starter but it doesn’t seem to be all that active. It doesn’t help that the only flour we could find was whole wheat in the entire store. It was literally the last package left.

In my young-adult phase, I briefly made a (very tight) living by baking organic whole-wheat bread and selling it mostly out of my home. When I moved here, I tried to recreate the 24-loaf-at-a-time recipe by dividing everything by 12†. After about a dozen failures, I decided that the environment must be different somehow. We now bake bread from a 150 year old sourdough starter, but prefer baguettes to loaves.

† Yes, I know that recipes can be doubled or halved, but it’s trickier when you alter by larger proportions. But hey: Flour, a tiny amount of honey, water and yeast is NOT a complex recipe. What had changed: I had used Deaf Smith County (TX) flour and didn’t have access to it in Oregon. I had used “by the pound” commercial yeast and was using individual containers. I had been living in Houston and was living in Coos Bay, OR (on the coast). I had been using a gas oven and was using an electric…

There is truth to that.

I went to the Grocery store a few days ago. Both Flour & Yeast were Sold Out.

Bread bakers can disagree even when they’re on the same side. I never add sugar to my “poolish” or the completed recipe. Which I generally make and age in the fridge 2-5 days before shaping, rising and baking. BTW, the dough in my household – ready to shape and bake – is called Jabba.