Bread
Starter
4 Cups (do not use metal measuring cups) Bread Flour (I use General Mills Gold Medal Bread Flour.)
4 Cups Water
2 T (-spoon measures are “heaping”) Sugar (I use raw Hawaiian.)
Mix. Cover with cloth. Allow to brew up for 4 days. Mix down daily.
If there is no bubbly action by day 4, add a package of yeast and allow 4 more days.
Store in (non metal) container large enough to allow for some expansion and strong enough not to crack from pressure of released gas.
Refrigerate, or use at least twice a week.
Use at least once every two weeks, or refresh with ¼ cup flour and a little sugar. Mix down the “hootch” (the brown beer) that forms as mixture ferments.
The evening before bread-making day. In a large (non metal) bowl, mix [very well]:
All of the Starter
2 Cups Flour
2 Cups Water
2 T Sugar
1 Package of Yeast
Return the original amount of Starter to it’s container, and allow it to brew up for at least 4 hours before returning it to the refrigerator.
To the remainder, add and mix in well:
2 Cups of Flour
1 Cup of Water
Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to sit out over night (if your bowl is not large enough to accommodate a doubling in size of the Sponge, place it over a pan that can catch the overflow).
The next morning, to the Sponge in the Big Bowl, add:
1 T Oat Flour
4 T Soy Flour
1 T Brown Rice Flour
2 T Wheat Germ
1 T Rye Flour
1 T Corn Flower
1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
4 T Lecithin
2 t Salt
4 T Dry Milk
½ t Baking Powder
4 T Sugar
2 Packets Yeast
In a small bowl, beat together, and add to the dry ingredients:
½ Cup Milk
2 Eggs
4 T (cold pressed, i.e. Hain) Sesame Oil
2 T Molasses
2 T Honey (preferably aged 1 year)
Mix together and add:
2 Cups Bread Flour
Mix until dough begins to clean the bowl.
Turn out the dough onto a well-floured board adding as much as 1-1/2 Cups additional Bread Flour in the process. Knead 12—15 minutes.
Place in well-oiled bowl. (Use a different oil, say Olive Oil. If you oil the bowl before you start to kneed the bread, you can oil your hands at the same time. This will help to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands excessively.) Cover with plastic wrap and a wet cloth. Allow to sit in a warmish place until it has doubled in size. For a just-about-perfect bread rising spot, I place the bowl on a rack placed over the top of an open crock pot, loosely covered with tinfoil and with a light aimed at it from near and above. It is also helpful for the rising process if the bowl is placed on the rack before kneading, at the time it is oiled, so that it gets warm. Approximately 2 hours.
Punch down the risen dough. Punch vigorously from the edge of the bowl, around the circumference toward the middle until the gas has been expelled.
Knead again for a few minutes until the dough has again reached a uniform consistency.
Divide the dough into two equal amounts and reform them into seamless balls. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to stand for 10 minutes.
During this 10 minutes, grease (I use clarified bacon fat; butter and lard are also acceptable.) two large bread pans. (Mine are 10” L measured from the top.)
Dust the bread board with a mixture of
Flour
Uncooked! Quaker Oat Meal
Sesame Seeds
Roll out the dough. Roll up the rolled-out dough, being sure to do so firmly and evenly to make sure there are no air pockets. Pinch closed the seams all around. Place seam-side up in the greased bread pan. Press the dough in firmly with the backs of the fingers of one hand clapping. Placing one hand on the dough, turn over the pan and shake out the dough while being careful to hold the loaf together. Place the dough back in the pan seam side down.
The dough should come to about 2/3 of the way up the pan. If there is more dough than is needed, cut off the ends, pinch the ends closed, and save the remainder. This can be used to make an excellent pan fried bread. Do not place remainders back into the Starter as the addition of the eggs and milk and oils and salts will eventually spoil the starter. If you do not want to make pan fried bread and do not want to waste the dough, wrap it separately and store it in the refrigerator; it will last until the next bread making, at which time it can be incorporated in the Sponge (again, not the Starter).
Cover with plastic wrap and a moist cloth, and allow to rise to where it has formed a nice round hump above the top of the bread pan. Experience will tell you how much of a hump you can allow before there is danger that the loaf will collapse in the oven. You can score the top at this point (use a serrated or razor-sharp knife), or just before placing in the oven to allow an “oven spring” which will not rip the crust. About 1 hour.
Bake in a 350°[the degree symbol is alt 0176] oven for 50 minutes. The oven I am using is a convection oven. This means that I do not have to pre-heat the oven, and I must cover the bread with tin foil for the first 40 minutes. You must use your experience to adjust for your own oven. I never found it of much help, but bread is done when a tap on the crust produces a nice hollow sound.
Remove the bread from the pans and place the loaves on their sides to cool for at least 2 hours before eating. You place the loaf on it’s side to allow the steam to escape without softening the crust.
Place the cooled loaves in heavy plastic bags and store. (Ideally, in a situation where bread is consumed rapidly it is stored without the plastic bags in a tin box with perforations--I store mine in the oven. If you store bread by freezing, you are forbidden to use this recipe.) The last slice is still fresh and tasty when both loaves are finished in about two weeks (of course, there is nothing like the first slice!).
This is a good, healthy, tasty recipe I have been developing for more than 12 years. If you are new to bread making, be patient. I must have screwed up a thousand loaves before I got to the stage where I can alter this basic recipe without ending up with a disaster.
Some things that I do that are different are: adding whole grains to the dough, adding left over cheese (grate) or yogurt, accidentally forgetting the salt or some other ingredient (in almost all cases you can add an important ingredient at any time before the pan rising). Towards the end of a loaf, if you are anxious to make fresh bread, cut up what remains into cubes, dust with my curry, sprinkle on soy sauce, and sauté in butter, for really tasty croutons. Give some to the birds. Give a loaf to your neighbor.
