April 8, 2020
Mister Baker
Part of our lifestyle is creating healthy recipes or healthier versions of favorites like chili, marinara, applesauce. We prefer natural, less sugar, more healthy food options to serve, but our budget is limited. I try to stay at $50 per person or less.
About 10 years ago, we had a bread recipe and baked 6 loaves once a week (this ended when we lost the big oven) but Louis wanted a better-than-sliced-bread recipe that tasted better than Publix fresh.
A few weeks of experimentation cumulated in these:
Beautiful artisan French loaves.
And gorgeous “regular” white bread in loaf pans that Louis slices to perfection and stores in our Tupperware bread box to keep fresh.
He has to bake a set every day to keep up with our demand, but at $0.36 per set ($0.18 per loaf!), it is well in our budget.
Sugar, salt, olive oil, yeast, water, and bead flour. That’s it. Of course, Louis is a special kind of baker in that nothing is every measured. (He says some of this and some of that and it always comes out great as it’s “all in the proportions.”) For super soft bread, (dinner rolls) he will use bacon grease instead of olive oil (not as healthy, but way better than crescent dinner rolls and so much tastier!) or for “French,” he’ll reduce the sugar and shape into logs brushed with butter.
The original recipe came from somewhere on google that he modified bit by bit. Temperature of the yeast and rising time are the most vital parts for chemistry.
I challenge you to experiment! Find ready-made foods your family loves and research how to make them and try it! You can make small batches and try them out today – added hint: homemade bread makes great inexpensive croutons and stuffing too!
Thank you for reading.
Type at you later,
~Nancy Tart
