Banana Rye Yeast Bread

As it has been a while since we last bake a loaf of yeast bread. Today, we decide to bake a loaf of banana rye yeast bread so that it can be used as our sandwich bread for the coming week. The recipe is adapted from About.com: Bread Baking. We like this recipe as we find it to have certain elements of nutrition and at the same time it is versatile.

Ingredients:

• 3 medium bananas (mashed into 1 cup)
  
• 1/2 cup warm milk
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 2 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 cup rye flour
• 2 tbsp brown sugar, packed
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 cups all purposed flour
  

Steps:

1. Combine yeast, warm water and milk in a small bowl. Stir until all well mixed and leave for 5 minutes.
2. Place a cup of mashed potatoes into a large bowl and stir in the yeast solution.
3. Then, add in rye flour, brown sugar, oil, and salt.
   
4. Gradually, mix in the all purpose flour to make a thick dough that can be kneaded by hand.
5. Place the dough out onto board and knead for 5 minutes.
6. On another large bowl, grease the bowl with a small amount of oil. Place the dough in the bowl and flip the dough to cover the dough with oil.
7. Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for an hour and half in a warm place until it has doubled.
8. After an hour and a half, remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Punch down in the dough to release the air from the bread and knead out bubbles for 5 minutes.
9. Shape the dough into a 8 inches log and place into a lightly 9 x 5 grease loaf pan.
10. Cover the loaf pan with plastic wrap and let it rise for another 50 minutes.
11. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F and place the loaf pan in center of oven for 10 minutes, then at 325 degrees F for 45 minutes. For the last 15 minutes of baking, loosely cover the pan with aluminum foil.
12. You can test if the bread is done by thumping the bottom of the bread and it should sound hollow.
    
13. Let the bread cool on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes before slicing it

The bread is just out from the oven and it is looking great. Let it cool down a bit and we will post some photos. Can't wait to try it!

Whole Wheat Beer Bread

For this week, we are thinking of exploring something different from the ordinary kind of bread. On top of that, we are looking for a bread recipe with simple ingredients and at the same time it can be prepared in a very short time. This lead us to discovering the whole wheat beer bread from allrecipe.com. Since we have some beer in the fridge in preparation for the cold winter, we do not mind using a can for this recipe. It sounds interesting and best of all it can be ready in less than an hour.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 (355 ml) can or bottle beer

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar.
   
3. Pour in beer, stir until a stiff batter is formed. It may be necessary to mix dough with your hands.
   
4. Place dough into prepared greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
5. Put in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean.

Overall, the bread turns out good. We guess the use of beer kind of substitute the yeast that usually exists in bread. However, the size of the bread may not be suitable to be used as a sandwich bread. Anyhow , it is good to go on its own.

Crusty Potato Bread

This week's theme revolves around potatoes as we bought 10lb of Russet potatoes last week. Thus, we are baking crusty potato bread this week.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup mashed potatoes
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dried yeast
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 3 cups bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons butter

Steps:

1. Boil peeled potatoes in boiling water for 20-30 minutes. Mash the potatoes.
2. Place milk and water in a microwave and heat to lukewarm in a bowl.
   
3. Stir in sugar and yeast and set aside for 5 minutes.
   
4. On a separate bowl, sift bread flour, whole wheat flour and salt.
   
5. Mix butter and mashed potato into flour using hand.
   
6. Pour wet ingredient into dry ingredient and mix until all well blended.
7. Place dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 - 10 minutes until dough becomes smooth.
   
8. Place the dough into a greased bowl and cover with cling wrap till double in size for about an hour.
   
9. Punch dough down and place into a greased bread pan.
   
10. Cover and leave in a warm place until dough is level with top of pan.
    
11. Bake at 400 degrees F for 45 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

Overall, we find the bread is soft in the inside and crusty on the outside. However, the bread is lacking in potato flavor. Probably we should increase the amount of potatoes in the future.

Our Very First Loaf

My wife and I, we're bread lovers. Yes we enjoy our bread very much.
We would buy about at least 2 loafs every week, if not 2 and 1/2. We'll use it for various things - either for sandwich or with butter and jam.
So we figured what better things to learn than to make your own bread. This we did. So we embarked on making our first loaf not very long ago and as you can see below is the picture of the end result.





It may not be much, but it tasted just like other breads we've bought out there.
To make your basic loaf like did, there are 4 key ingredients

1. Salt
2. Flour - we used all purpose white flour for now
   
3. Water (lukewarm)
4. Yeast

The steps are pretty simple too. You'll need to:

1. Mix your yeast with the water.
2. Then simply mix the salt and flour.
3. Then stir until you get a wet dough mixture.
   
4. Simply leave the dough covered for about 2 hours to allow it to rise.
5. Then, once it has risen, you'll need to knead the dough a little. Add flour (if necessary) to avoid it being sticky to your fingers.
6. Shape it according to whimps and fancy. Allow it to rest for another 1/2 hour.
   
7. Then simply cut any design of your liking at the top of the dough. The idea is to allow a crack for the dough to expand when baking it.
8. Once you've done that, simply place the dough onto a tray (with a parchment paper beneath it).
   
9. As for your oven, you should have already set it to pre-heat at 350F. Then place the tray into your over, whist you place a smaller tray with water below in the oven as well (to allow for moisture in the oven during the baking process).
10. Bake the bread for 40 minutes. Of course, check it from time to time to see if its ready as some oven may be hotter than others.