Fresh Homemade Bread, Nine Year Old Style

I don’t know about you, but we think making bread should be a cinch. Something you pull off easily in the morning or after work. No problem.

So we teach our kids to make bread using the Bosch mixer, which was designed for heavy and repeated loads – like daily bread making. It’s easy peasy, and it turns out some really awesome bread, like these beautiful loaves that our nine-year-old made this morning.

These two loaves were made with 100% prairie gold flour, freshly ground in the Nutrimill. And my, what good bread it was!

Ingredients:

3 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons yeast
1/4 c. gluten
7 c. freshly ground Prairie Gold whole wheat flour
2 2/3 c. warm water (115 degrees)
1/2 c. rapadura sugar
2 tablespoon butter, melted (cooled slightly)

Directions:

Measure about 5 cups of the flour into the mixer. Add the salt, yeast and gluten and mix to combine slightly.

Add the water, rapadura and butter to the dry mixture and mix everything together. Gradually add the remaining 2 cups of flour, or whatever amount is required to create a soft dough that is not too sticky. (Better too soft than too stiff; you can always add a little more flour.)

Knead the dough for about 8-10 minutes by machine, or 15 minutes by hand. It is ready when you can take a small lump of dough and stretch it thin enough to see light through it without it tearing apart.

Divide the dough into two equal parts. In a few strokes, hand-knead it into an oval-shaped loaf. Pinch the bottom seam together, and then slide it over the counter, seam side down, to seal. Place it in a greased 4×9″ bread pan (seam side down).  Repeat with the other ball of dough.

Cover the loaves with a clean towel and let them rise for about 1 hour, or until doubled. Unlike most bread recipes, this one only rises once. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown.