Photo Friday: Another Year of Bread Baking

Back in 2010 when my wife and I decided to bake all our own bread for a year, neither of us knew we would continue the practice as long as we have. It has now been 13 years since we’ve bought a loaf of bread, other than when we are traveling. We do still buy some flatbreads like tortillas and naan, but other than that we make our own. Homemade bread proved to be so tasty and nutritious that we couldn’t go back to store-bought bread!

Whole Wheat Pita Bread

I have found a few favorite recipes that I tend to make often, and one is the King Arthur recipe for Easy Everyday Sourdough Bread. Baked in a Pullman loaf pan, it makes a great bread for sandwiches. I have experimented with different mixes of flours, and the recipe works quite well when using 20% whole grain rye flour instead of the whole wheat flour.

Sourdough Rye Bread

I’ve also used the Hayden Flour Mills Perfect Loaf blend, which has 70% bread flour, 25% Rouge de Bordeaux flour and 5% whole grain rye flour. That flour works well in this recipe, and the bread has great flavor and works well for sandwiches too.

sourdough bread

Another of my favorite recipes is Breadtopia’s Sourdough No-Knead Bread. I’ve tweaked it a bit over the years, and so have they for that matter! My version has 33% whole wheat flour, and a 67% hydration level. I baked a loaf recently using the heirloom French Rouge de Bordeaux flour, and it made for a tasty and crunchy loaf. I use my oval Breadtopia clay baker for this one, which creates a little ‘mini-oven’ inside that makes for a great oven spring and a crispy crust.

Rouge de Bordeaux sourdough bread

I also used the clay baker recently for a sourdough Pane d’ Altamura (rustic Italian bread) loaf made with durum wheat flour. Durum is usually used to make pasta, and in bread it makes for a golden color and chewy texture.

Pane d’ Altamura bread

Lately I’ve been experimenting with Ligurian Focaccia Bread using the recipe from Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid Heat series.  It makes for a very tasty focaccia bread that I find hard to stop eating!

Ligurian Focaccia Bread

closeup of focaccia

Something else my wife and I really enjoy is my Multi-Grain Seeded Dinner Rolls.   I make these quite often, and they are a tasty companion to a bowl of soup. It was adapted from my Whole Grain Bread recipe, and they have a mix of millet, sunflower and sesame seeds both inside and out.

Multi-Grain Seeded Dinner Rolls

In the years since I started baking all our bread, I have baked a number of recipes from the King Arthur Flour website.  They have a lot of great recipes there, and I can rely on them to be well-tested so they perform as described. Their recipes are often a starting point for my own creations. My version of their recipe for Moomie’s Famous Burger Buns is something I still make quite often, and it is my go-to recipe for buns.

Moomie’s Famous Burger Buns

I do make tortillas fairly often, and my favorite is a mix of 50% masa harina and 50% all-purpose flour. I love the Masienda masa, which comes in several colors and is made from heirloom corn varieties. I made yellow and blue ones not long ago for our dinner of fish tacos, and it was hard to choose a favorite between the two versions!

yellow corn tortillas

blue corn tortillas

I’ve also been developing a Whole Wheat Cinnamon Roll recipe, though I haven’t made them in a while. I’m still tweaking that recipe, and working on getting a tight ‘jellyroll’ on the dough before slicing and baking. They are tasty though, and while they may not look perfect that doesn’t stop me from eating them.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Rolls

iced cinnamon rolls

I hope you have enjoyed this photo tour of a few of the breads I baked in 2023. If you are interested, you can see most of my bread recipes on my recipe pages. I’ll be back soon with more happenings from Happy Acres.