First Bread!

Not only was this my first recipe of the year, it's also the first time I've ever made bread. It also might possibly signify my journey into the world of baking. I don't know, baking sounds like such a dirty word. If you make bread, does it mean you're baking?

A little history is in order. I don't have a whole lot of self control, which is somewhat strange because I do have a significant amount of self-discipline. Last week while searching for all sorts of motivating quotes on self discipline, I came across this:

"Self-discipline might be defined as marshalling one’s willpower to accomplish things that are generally regarded as desirable, and self-control as using that same sort of willpower to prevent oneself from doing what is seen to be undesirable or to delay gratification." (http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/selfdiscipline.htm).

Maybe that's not right. Maybe I do have some sort of self control, but it's imposed at the grocery store and not at my house. I think it's because I only spend so long in a grocery store so I can speed past the things I really don't need to be taking home. At home on the other hand, I can only walk away from a plateful of brownies so many times before I finally sit down with the entire plate and a fork. Bad idea.

So I buy a couple of dark chocolate bars every once and awhile and it's ok. I do not bring home ingredients to bake a batch of brownies because I will literally sit down and eat the entire batch of brownies.

I once thought that I harnessed some sort of will power. I was spending the day with my aunt in Boulder a few years back and we stopped at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I selected some fine truffles and explained to my aunt that these would actually last me some time because they were so rich. They weren't like Hershey's Kisses where you could sit and eat the whole bag. No, these were fancy chocolates. Ones that you eat one a day. Or something.

They were gone before the day was out. Boy did she tease me about that.

I also had a slip a year or so back. We'll call it the French Truffle Incident. I blogged about it, so I went get too much into detail but I had bought an amazing French cookbook and after making a few decadent meals, discovered that I could make my very own French Truffles. Have you ever had French Truffles? They're amazing!

I don't own sugar, cocoa (although cocoa in itself is not that bad for you), white flour, butter, etc. I went out and got the ingredients for the truffles and while putting them in my cupboard, got a strange sensation of guilt. I brushed it off. Either that night or the next morning, I went into a craze where I found it absolutely unacceptable that I had become "one of those people". Those people who own white sugar and flour, butter and the like, and can just add it all willy-nilly to any food they want because it is RIGHT THERE!

I put a stop to that before it even started. I bagged it up and took it to work and handed it all off to one of the women. For free. Freakish? Yep. You should've seen what that little scenario was like. Anyway, so just when you think you might be crazy, you can rest assured that I am most likely as crazy, if not more so, than you. I just hide it well.

So I stay away from "baking". Like brownies, cakes, pies, truffles, sweets I guess you'd say. But to some extent, things like bread as well. I have figured out though that if you use the right ingredients, bread is not so bad for you after all. I only own whole wheat flour and brown rice flour. I own coconut oil instead of butter. I have agave nectar instead of sugar. I have absolutely no white flour, sugar or butter in my house. Or margarine.

Oh sure, I can go out and buy a brownie. That's not a big deal. It's an awesome treat. But I don't go buy 12 brownies. Because I know what I will do with them.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. So I found a recipe for yeast free bread on Food.com. I chose yeast free simply because I hear that yeast is kind of difficult to work with, what with all the rising and not rising. It's a super simple recipe and it came out so well. I can't believe people talk about bread being so hard to make! Here's the basic part of it, then I'll tell you how I tweaked it.

Ingredients:
3 cups whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups rice milk (works with any liquid)
1/4 cup liquid fat (melted margarine, olive oil, vegetable oil, etc) I used melted coconut oil.

Directions:
Mix dry ingredients.
Mix liquids and add to dry.
Stir until there is no more flour. The dough should be moist but not sticky.
Shape into ball or oval.
Score the surface lightly in a diamond or X shape to prevent splitting of crust.
Place on clean cookie sheet.
Bake for 35 minutes at 400 degrees.

And voila. Bread. The recipe actually called for baking it for 40 minutes but it was starting to get pretty darn crusty. I pulled it out and started eating it right away. It was so good!

So I used almond milk for the liquid and coconut oil for the fat. I added cinnamon, vanilla and honey to make it a little on the sweeter side.

I think for my next attempt I'll do some sort of sun dried tomato basil bread. It says you can use tomato juice as the liquid (or any juice really) to make it more savory.

Or maybe a rosemary olive oil bread?

The great thing is, these are healthy ingredients. You can make things as healthy as you want, really. Which is why it's ok for me to make bread. Everything in moderation though, obviously.