Fresh Homemade Bread

Fresh Bread...is there anyone who can resist a fresh, crisp crackling loaf of bread coming straight out of the oven...it is one of those heavenly smells.

Our family is big time into bread, usually the french loaf variety that we buy from Fresh and Easy. It is one of the kinds that you par bake at home so in 6-8 minutes you have fresh bread. My family LOVES the french loaf so much that we were going through at least one a day between breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and the occasional side for dinner.

So why am I the big bad mommy who has decided to take away the lovely white french bread and make everyone eat whole wheat/whole grain bread??? Because I want us to eat healthier and develop good eating habits that will last a life time that's why!!

I first heard about the authors of this book on another site called simpledailyrecipes.com when I was searching for a healthy blueberry muffin recipe. (side note get the blueberry muffin recipe from Jill's site they are amazing!!)

So Jill had some Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day recipes on her site so I tried them out and fell in love with how easy it was to make bread this way. I was even more excited when they came out with a second book Healthy Bread in Five minutes a day!

These recipes are sooooo easy, they require only a quick mixing of the ingredients and no kneading!

The first recipe I tried was the 100% Whole Wheat Bread, it contains no white flour at all just 7 cups of whole wheat, Vital wheat gluten, yeast, salt and water.

Big question would my girls eat it? (I have one daughter who shall remain nameless who had declared that whole wheat bread makes her gag!)

So you mix all the ingredients together and put them in a NON-airtight container, I chose one like this as it has a vent in the top.
Next you leave it out on your kitchen counter for 2 hours until it looks like this!
Now you can use the dough straight away but if you refrigerate it first for a couple of hours it is easier to handle. The next step is easy you just cut off enough dough to make a 1 pound loaf, roughly 1/4. You form it into a loaf and leave it to rise covered for 90 Min's. I put mine on parchment paper so that I could place it straight in the oven after rising. When there is about 30 minutes left in the rising time preheat your oven to 450 and put a baking stone in the oven to preheat as well. I use our pizza stone it works really well for me. Right before baking I cut slash marks in the top of the loaves and brushed them with water. I then sprinkled a combination of ground flax see and whole flax seeds on top.

When you put them in the oven you need to have an empty baking pan on the bottom shelf. First I put the bread on the stone, and then put 1 cup of hot tap water in the pan on the bottom shelf, the steam helps the crust become crusty. After 25 Min's of baking I remove the parchment paper and put the loaves back in for 10 more minutes.

This is what they look like when they come out!
They next need to cool completely on a wire rack.

Verdict from the girls....Apparently it tastes just like french loaf!!

I highly recommend this book, I got it for around $20 on Barnes and Noble.com and for you British folk, there is a version printed especially for you available at Amazon.co.uk called Five Minute Bread!

Happy Baking!!!

Christmas Trees - yes I am behind on everything!

So I fully realize that I am writing this approximately 45 days too late but I have just been sorting through my photos and found the ones of the Christmas tree.

Every year a different sister gets to choose the tree, last year was Rowena, the year before Madeline and this year was finally Naomi's turn! She was still six at Christmas time and I am sure you can imagine her excitement when she learned this was her year!

She made sure her big sisters knew this was absolutely, completely, 100 percent her decision!

So off we went in search of the perfect tree...

Got to love shopping for Christmas trees in short sleeves/shorts and flip flops! Madeline is such a California girl!

We walked up and down many aisles until..... she found the one she wanted!One thing I notice when I am walking around the mall/shops at Christmas time is how perfect so many of the stores trees are. Every ornament/bauble/ribbon is perfectly color coordinated and the pristine trees shine with the pride of their own perfection.

Our tree is nothing like that and I love that it is nothing like that! We have many old ornaments on our tree. Not necessarily nice old ornaments but ones that I made at vacation bible school at First Baptist Church in Fallbrook and somehow they have survived the years intact!

Also Father Christmas (English way to say it) or Santa Clause (American way to say it) leaves my girls a new ornament every year in their stocking. These ornaments are very random to say the least, he is often very good at getting them something that they are really into for that particular year.

One of my favorite parts of bringing home the tree is the excitement of just getting the ornament box out of the garage to bring in the house! The girls are just itching to get their fingers on THEIR ornaments. They always say things like "oh remember when I got this bear/dog/ballet shoes etc etc..." They each remember whose ornaments are whose and can be quite territorial about placing them on the tree.

I have a few favorites also like a glass ball that has a map of London (because I remember walking around those places) and a glass ball with the nativity scene on it (because that is what Christmas is all about of course!).


So in the end our tree ends up looking like this!

A colorful representation of all our individual personalities on one family tree!