Experimenting

Not sure what’s in the air but I’m into the baking lately.

I have successfully made bread regularly for the last month or so and I’m enjoying it more than ever.

All dressed up and no place to go. Other than in my mouth! This one became French toast just two days later. Yummo! Kris said it was the best French toast he’s ever had. My husband isn’t known for his drama so I took that to heart.

I guess it was Amber’s baby that got me back into it. Her husband David had asked for something “Amish” when I took requests and I made a batch of good bread. Good enough to give away even. I decided to make another and I’ve been at it ever since.

I’ve always sort of enjoyed it, but being an affirmation junky I tended toward giving up when it didn’t turn out right. My trials and errors span decades and though I’ve probably had more successes than failures the insecurity of not knowing when I was going to fail again was too much for me and there are large gaps in my adventures with bread dough.

Another problem I’ve had was it’s nutrition value. I should eat whole grain bread and I can’t make whole grain bread because it’s too blech! So I’ve decided to make what I know and now that I’m a little more confident I’m experimenting.

A friend gave me two bags of organic whole wheat flour. That’s what’s cookin’ today. That isn’t much of a stretch, but it’s definitely more coarse than what I’ve had before, so it HAS to be better for me right? There are a couple other tricks I want to try out in the next few weeks. Butter replacements and different dairy sources are doing little dances in my noggin.

I love when I’m just minding my own business and I hear a little “poof” behind me. The sound of the bread dough rising to the point of popping the lid off the bowl.

I love it’s earthy color.

Something about that makes me feel rich.

It’s a bread nursery

A little bundle of potential all tucked in and ready for the oven.

Everyone takes pictures of their bread babies don’t they? I promise I’ll get to where I don’t photograph every loaf after a while. I just can’t help myself, they’re so cute!

Look how much she’s grown!

In other baking news, I like to have muffins on hand for the boy’s breakfast. Quick and healthy in the morning is a goal that isn’t always easy. During a school week, we typically do cereal one day, oatmeal two days, smoothies one day and eggs one day. I would like to have a vast supply of yummy muffins to add into the mix, as well as something to grab and take with us on Sunday mornings. We eat our breakfasts in the church coffee house on Sundays and I take along Kashi cereal bars, but that gets a little old. Most store bought muffins are full of sugar and even chocolate chips, so I am pretty sure they are just big cupcakes with no icing. Most granola bars and cereal bars have high fructose corn syrup and really aren’t that healthy, so I’ve switched to the only thing they like that doesn’t have hyper-activity and pre-cancer in the ingredients list. Homemade healthy muffins would be great. I made some bran muffins recently that were yummmmmmmy. I like some oat and apple muffins too and I’m going to try some others. Today I tried avocado.

Avocado in a muffin? Why yes. Almost every recipe I found was for chocolate avocado muffins and only one of those had ingredients I mostly have. So that’s what I made. Not totally happy with them and will try another recipe after shopping for ingredients. Yet…they do look pretty, and though they are very NOT sweet, Aron loves them. Can’t argue with that. I mean these are pretty healthy little chocolate blobs.

Go ahead and click on that picture and look close. It’s purty!

Other than the chocolate I also want to try an avocado lime muffin.

You know what amazes me? Probably too many things, but one thing is that no matter what I think of…no matter how strange…like avocado lime muffins…if I google it I’m almost guaranteed to find that someone has already tried it and there’s a recipe available. There is NOTHING new under the sun…nothing. A wise man once said that.

Back to the bread for a minute, because bread is good. I posted a picture of some bread on facebook and my friend LaDonna saw it and asked me to teach her some stuff. That turned into a really neat day for us. I’ve decided that bread baking is a super neat way to spend productive time with a friend. It’s do then wait, do then wait and do then wait. All that waiting allows ample fellowship time and the smell…Oh Land A Goshen…the smell is divine. Sweet marmalade on toast…the smell is grand. Oh Pete’s Barb, Hank’s Barb and Sonny’s too, that smell will fill up your house and make your nose think it’s died and gone to heaven. Oh Vera with a crooked bonnet!

Sorry, homemade bread brings out Amish exclamations in me.

I’ve also made avocado pancakes, which were pretty good, but a little too “eggy” so I’ll be trying that again. The carrot cake pancakes I tried before that…excellent!

I’m stopping now.

I need to eat lunch.

Left-over chili with Italian herb swirl bread.

In case you were wondering.