Bread Wheat

Archive for March, 2008

Always Wanted to Learn to Make Bread but Didn’t Know Where to Start? This Article is for You!So, you finally decided to satisfy that baker’s urge? Wanna take the plunge and make some bread without even buying a $400 Kitchen Aide mixer and a $200 “Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme” bread machine. Well you’ve come to the right place. It all started a long, long, time ago. People made bread. They used their hands to mix it and beautiful brick and clay pizza ovens to bake it in. And as you might imagine it tasted way better than any lame store bought sandwich bread. Hungry yet?  Well lets get started. You will need: Water Flour (white or wheat) Sugar Baking Powder Yeast (I use Red Star.) Eggs Butter/Oil A Measure Cup A wooden spoon A Glass Bowl A Cookie Sheet About 3hrs of total time. Okay, to get started, put about 1 cup of water in to your glass bowl, and add 1 Table Spoon of yeast and 1 Table Spoon of sugar. Stir until completely dissolved into a nice tan color. Next add 2 eggs, 1/3 cup of melted butter, 2cups of flour and 1 Table Spoon of baking powder. Then stir with your wooden spoon. You could use almost any implement to stir with, but a wooden spoon is sturdy enough to keep going once the dough thickens up, and it isn’t too bad to clean off when your done. Keep adding flour about 1/2cup at a time until the dough stops being sticky, now switch to kneading the dough with your hands. This is accomplished by picking up the dough on one side and folding it over itself and pushing it down in the middle. Then repeating with a different side. Continue to knead the dough for about 10 minutes, it should be spongy feeling. Now sprinkle your baking sheet with a little bit of flour and place your dough on it for a moment, so you can wash out your mixing bowl. Okay, the bowl is all clean now right? Good. Now grab a sandwich baggie and turn it inside out over your hand. (poof you just made an instant glove!) Now dab your “gloved” hand into your butter and use it to grease the mixing bowl. Then discard the sandwich bag and viola’ your hands are still clean.

Finally a Healthy Bread that Fits in the ToasterFor some time I have been buying Wheat Montana Bread, as it has a variety of different kinds. Ideally I would like to be making my own organic bread but in all honestly I can not yet do that for a number for reasons, like the fact I don’t know how to, don’t have the  time and embarrassingly have to admit I don’t own one single bread pan yet. Although we enjoy the Wheat Montana Bread very much it isn’t always on sale so sometimes we look for other alternatives. One day while on the bread aisle I discovered that Wheat Montana had another kind of bread called Big Sky Wheat and it just so happen to be on sale so I got a loaf to try it out.Very rarely did I find that Montana Wheat Bread was less than $2.50 for a loaf but the Big Sky Wheat bread was on sale for $2.00 and the loaf was the same size. Despite being the same weight, the Big Sky has 5 more pieces of bread on average and the pieces are small enough to fit into a standard toaster. I especially liked this as both me and my son eat a lot of toast and the veggie burgers that I make are the perfect size for this size of bread. Of course you can’t just judge a bread by the shape it has it really has to taste good too. Thankfully the Montana Wheat Big Sky Wheat bread taste really great too, it has a certain amount of lightness to it, almost chewy, that I really am fond of in breads.The Wheat Montana Big Sky loaves also come in Big Sky Rye and Big Sky White but I have only tried the Big Sky Wheat. Although I won’t be abandoning the other Wheat Montana breads that I have been buying for the reason of ingredients, I definitely will be enjoying the Wheat Montana Big Sky Wheat bread for quite some time. I may even switch over to it completely just for the convenience of the size until I am up to the challenge of making my own bread. I would recommend both the Wheat Montana brand and the Wheat Montana Big Sky Wheat to anyone who wanted to get a healthy bread that tasted really good, and the Big Sky Wheat if they especially wanted a loaf of bread that had smaller sized slices of bread.

How to Stretch the Grocery Budget with Discounted BreadI’m an Oroweat snob and until a few years ago, didn’t think anything of spending $4 for a loaf of healthy wheat bread. With the rising cost of groceries and my husband’s ever shrinking paycheck, those $4 loaves were a luxury I couldn’t just afford to buy twice a week anymore.Baking one’s own bread is one way to lower the cost of your groceries. However, for those families who don’t have the time to bake nor the right equipment, there are other places to go searching for cheap bread  bargains.Watch the specials at your grocery storeIf you are a daily shopper such as myself, you’ll eventually come to discover that certain bread products go on sale on a fairly regular, predictable cycle. At my local market for example, Oroweat breads usually go on sale every other week at a price of two loaves for $4. When the bread goes on sale, I always buy enough to see me through the next sales cycle.Watch the discounted bakery racksFor in-house bagels, donuts, cakes, English muffins, and hoagie rolls, these are usually moved to a cart in the rear of the store where they are discounted for a quick sale. These discounted bakery products are set out in the early morning and marked down 50% of the original value.Dollar storesMy local dollar store sells day old Oroweat breads, English muffins, and bagels for $1 a package, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s worth checking at your local dollar store to learn if they offer the same cheap bread bargains.Discount food outletsMost communities have a discounted food outlet or grocery store that sells food nearing the expiration date. These discount food stores are another great place to find cheap bread and bakery products.Bakery Thrift StoresMy mom used to call these shops the “day old bread” stores and that’s exactly what a bakery thrift store is all about. These stores sell cheap bread, bakery goods, and packaged pastry products that have been pulled off the shelf just that morning. Most of these places offer weekly specials and extra discounts on certain days of the week.

$9.00 For a Loaf of BreadSo you go to your local market because you need to pick up a loaf of bread to make sandwiches for your child’s lunch. You also pick up some crackers, buns for the hamburgers for your cookout and a box or two of cereal for breakfast. What would you do when you get up to the checkout,  unload your cart, look up and see you just paid $9.00 for that loaf of bread and $6.00 for each box of cereal? Yes, I said $9.00 a loaf of bread! I could be wrong; it could be only $7.00. Well, that’s what is going to happen by next fall. Better load up the freezer or else dig out and dust off the old bread maker down in the basement. Hope you didn’t sell it at last summer’s garage sale. I’ll let you in on some of the things being said at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and yes, it’s boring, but you better read this and you better know what’s going on. As of this Tuesday, February 26, 2008 the most versatile of all-purpose flour, red winter wheat, used in cakes, crackers, breads and pastries, jumped to an all-time high of $10.50 a bushel. Spring wheat also rose by the daily limit to $14.93 a bushel, the highest price for any U.S. wheat futures contract. Just today February 29,2008 the farm news (CBS) said that the bushel of wheat, that the farmers were paid for last year at somewhere around $3.00 is already costing more than $10.00. These are not exact amounts; actually they are higher and going up fast. I’m not a commodities expert, but you get the picture. Check out the Chicago Board of Trade for yourself. We basically have three classes of wheat that we are in danger of running out of. They are red spring wheat, durum and soft white. The prices are affecting consumer bakers, who have to pass the hike on to their customers, you and me. I don’t know if you noticed this either, but since November 2007, the wholesale price of flour has risen 25 to 90 percent, pushing up the price of pasta, bread, and your dough-nuts! Spaghetti noodles made with wheat cost 18% more today than a year ago and if you’ve also noticed, whole-wheat bread is 12% higher.