home made bread

I bake about two loaves each week for my family and seem to have perfected the recipe enough that the resulting loaves are consistent in shape and taste. My hubbie and kid prefer this bread over the sweetened supermarket bread and it's easy enough to make not to be a weekly hassle for me. So if you'd like to try some, my tweaked recipe follows below:


6 1/2 cups of all purpose or half and half bread flour (whole wheat is too dense to rise well)
1 cup of broken grain cereal (secret ingredient, see pic below)
3 cups warm water (or whey, or potato water, or bean soaking water etc)
1 egg
1 1/2 tablespoon salt
1 full tablespoon yeast
1 tablespoon of some sort of sugar, to proof yeast

Measure 1 cup of warm water, put in separate small bowl. Add yeast and sugar and whisk well. Wait about 5 minutes, or until a layer of foam appears on water surface.

Add flour, grains & salt to mixing bowl. Then add yeast mixture to flour and start mixing.
Immediately add the egg.

Let mixer turn until all the dough is stuck like a ball to the dough hook (because of the egg the bottom will stay stuck to the bowl, don't worry about it).

Remove dough hook and put a hot wet dishcloth over bowl.
Put somewhere warm but not hot for a couple of hours.

When the dough has nicely risen, as in looks like a big mushroom, scrape off from inside bowl, divide in two and put either one in a metal loaf pan (with or without some antistick oil). Push gently in all corners and then LEAVE IT ALONE for another 10 minutes or so (set timer). After 10 minutes it will have recovered handling and started to rise again so stick them into the COLD oven and turn on the heat to about 350 - 375 degrees, for about half an hour to 45 minutes. When the loaf slides around in the pan, is loose, it's done.

The tricks seem to be proofing the yeast, even tho technically it should not need it, adding the egg for more volume, letting the dough recover after putting it in the pan and sticking it in a cold oven so the dough keeps rising while the oven warms up...

But I did just hear about another trick, adding moisture the first third of baking to get a larger fluffier loaf, so that'll be next week's experiment!