I've always told Louise that beer is just liquid bread; they both have all the same ingredients (grain, yeast and water). Beer, of course does have the additional ingredient, hops, but it is just a flavoring as are caraway seeds in rye bread. This has been my excuse for the consumption of a few bottles of "liquid bread".
The other day, I finally took action. I was at Whole Foods (or as my son, Dan, calls it, "Whole Paycheck"), and decided to look for rye flour since I had a yearning for rye bread. Sure enough, there it was on the shelf so I purchased some.
I went home, found a reasonable looking recipe on the internet, and proceeded to make my own rye bread! Surprisingly, it turned out quite nicely although I did trash the kitchen in the process. It turned out so good, in fact, that I made another batch the next day and made two smaller loaves instead of one large one. My neighbor, T.J., was the recipient of one of the two smaller loaves and, unless he was lying to me, really enjoyed it. Of course, what are you going to say when your neighbor forces a loaf of bread on you?
Yesterday, I decided to try regular old homemade white bread. Amazingly, it came out great too. There's nothing to this bread making! In my usual fashion, I'll probably wind up spending a lot of money on equipment to continue this and then stop as soon as the equipment has been purchased. Lets see, we need a Kitchen Aid mixer, a bread machine, an outdoor stone oven, what else?
More bread projects will include English muffins, French rolls, and those really hard crusted rolls that taste so good! I'm glad I don't have to worry about a gluten free diet!
