After another week of giving tours and being hot, I decided to bake some bread yesterday. I was too tired to write the blog post then, so I’m writing it now. I’m actually going to the zoo later this morning so I’ll probably make a post about that as well.
My bread today is Apple Yeast Bread! You put applesauce in the dough. I had a feeling as I was baking it that it wouldn’t be very sweet, and I was right. I was texting my mom during the process, and I made the comment that it was probably added more as a food for the yeast, along with the honey. Yeast needs sugar in order to grow, multiply, and release CO2, which is why bread dough rises. This is actually the concept behind carbonation in fermented drinks as well, such as beer and Champagne, kombucha, and traditional ginger beer. You keep those bottles closed as the yeasts eat up the sugar and expel CO2 and you get a nice bubbly drink! Now, honey has some problems when it comes to yeast fermentation, but that’s mostly if you use processed honey. I usually buy raw honey so even though it has antiseptic properties, it won’t be a problem for this bread.
I am actually trying to grow my own ginger bug but I’ve failed 3 times. Crossing my fingers for number 4!
Anywayyyyy, my bread recipe booklet is marketed as vintage, pioneer recipes. It makes sense that something that may be more accessible to homesteading women, like apples and applesauce, would be used if they weren’t able to get cane or molasses sugar. I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie Books and how far that the Ingalls would have to go to a store before they settled closer to towns.
So without further ado, my bread!
Gotta get that yeast slurry going. It always looks so strange but it’s the science never fails to interest me!
Lotsa salt.
I buy raw honey mostly because I like the unprocessed taste better, but I heard that sometimes processed honey can mess with the health benefits. My usage of honey doesn’t really cross over with that, but eh, I figured I’d throw that out there.
SURPRISE INGREDIENT!
Ladies and gents, this recipe called for shortening. I don’t like Crisco if I can help it, and, well, since these are pioneer recipes, I bought LARD. Yes, lard! It has a horrible rap, and you can thank Crisco for that. My family’s bakery does use vegetable shortening in some of our recipes, but man you can’t beat lard. If you’re not a vegetarian, that is. Anyway, I was excited to find they sell lard at Walmart now. I don’t know if they sell it at the regular grocery store I go to but I should check. Lard is actually better for you than vegetable shortening. Again, this is also if you’re not a vegetarian. I have veg friends and I’d never serve them something with lard in it. It’s not quite the same, but I have a huge aversion towards mushrooms and I’d lose it if someone fed me them to be sneaky and mess with me. It’s just cruel.
Powdered milk, hot water, and mix it all together!
Finally I added the yeast slurry. Then it was time to add the flour!
I had some troubles.
I had to roll up my metaphorical shirtsleeves and do the last cup and a half of flour by hand.
Can you imagine Ma Ingalls with a KitchenAid? She would have been all over that business. I remember reading a post awhile back about all these homesteading methods everyone (yes, everyone), should know including butchering your own hogs and cooking on an open fire. And while the thought behind it was you need to know these things in case the world goes to hell and we have to, IDK, become pioneers and go west and live in a one room log cabin, all I could think about was the Little House books and how much time they took to just survive. While I do know how to cook in a dutch oven and I love camping, you can’t take my KitchenAid from me. Also I’m not going to butcher a hog, not at ALL sorry. I can’t even put a worm on a hook when I go fishing.
I put it in my improvised oven proof box for an hour and it POOFED. Also peek at my dinner recipe up there.
PUNCH. My favorite part.
Back in the proofbox.
I was surprised at the 3 rises this bread has, and there was a slight problem with it later, but I’ll explain when I get there.
Also I didn’t really weight the halves so they were a bit different sizes. OH WELL.
As you can see, not only was one larger, I think it genuinely had more oven spring. The loaf on the right was denser. I’m not entirely sure how that happened since they were proofed exactly the same, but the loaf ban on the left is also a bit of a different shape and size and I think that was part of it.
My stove is still greasy from cooking dinner, sorry.
I was a bit freaked out when I pulled these, because the crust was rock hard. I even texted my mom upset. All I had to do was wait, though, because they softened as the bread cooled.
It has a dense crumb structure, but it still tastes just fine. The other loaf is even better. I think the denseness might have been contributed to the third rise. If you let a dough rise too much, the yeast won’t have any more sugars. So it stops rising because it stops producing CO2. I think that’s what happened with the smaller loaf. Regardless, the flavor is still good, it’s just a bit denser than a yeast bread probably should be. I’d like to experiment with it rising only twice, but I don’t want to use up that much flour in the future.
It doesn’t have hardly any sweetness, and it’s just a regular white bread. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I read the recipe, but in the process of baking it I was sure it would end up more like this and I was right. It makes pretty good toast. I’m not sure if I’d make it again mostly because it’s just a plain white bread. Regardless, I enjoyed the process!
As for my next bread recipe, I don’t know. Maybe one of the quick breads? They also have fried breads that I’m eager to try. You’ll find out soon enough I suppose! Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great day.
The Solo Geographer 