It's a bird, It's a plane, It's. . . LDS Supermom!!! Oh, wait. Never mind.

So, I'm trying to bake bread every week, and, so far, it's not turning out so hot.

I decided that I was going to bake bread to replace the outrageously priced bread that (it seems like) we buy on a daily basis.  The worst part is that it doesn't even taste that good!  One thing that I do actually miss about living in Utah, besides the affordable health insurance, is that you could buy bread at the grocery store that tasted almost like homemade.  Or almost like Great Harvest Bread.  Whichever.

Ok, so I've had this Nutrimil wheat grinder for a couple of years, but I never had anywhere to put it in our old house, so now that I have space, I decided to break it out.  My mother-in-law gave it to me, and it was such an awesome gift, but I always felt guilty for not using it.  Well, no more! 

I finally bought some wheat from the Cannery (at $7.25 for a 25 lb bag, it's cheaper than cheap), read the instruction book, and I was a-grindin' away.  And it actually was really easy, with my awesome Nutrimill [thanks again, Lynda!!  :o)] 

The problem came when I tried to bake the bread.

The first batch came out really crumbly, and definitely not the texture for sandwiches, which is kinda the point of the whole thing.  So I called my friend Kathryn, who is totally the homemade bread guru (her family hasn't bought bread from the store, ever?), and she gave me a couple of pointers, like, using vital wheat gluten, and applesauce in the recipe.

However, the only place to buy vital wheat gluten is at Whole Foods, which had an odd smell of body odor, but could have just been something exotic from the salad bar.  I also didn't appreciate the guilty feeling while I shopped, but I made it through with only vaguely disgusted looks from the cashier and bagger because I didn't bring my own reusable bag. 

So, I made another batch yesterday, with very high hopes.  However, the bread itself turned out to be very flat.  I did some reading, and I found out that Kathryn's recipe, which works fantastically in the mountains of the Utah desert, doesn't work the same when you're in high humidity, and close to sea level, which we are in good old Wake Forest, NC.  Oh, and the weird squiggles were me spraying Pam on the bread in an attempt to make it prettier.  Yeah, that didn't work.

The good news is that the inside texture of the bread is beautiful, just what you dream about for sandwiches, or bread and butter to go with soup--it's just very very flat. So, basically, I'm thinking that I need to keep the vital wheat gluten and applesauce, but pretty much double the yeast that's called for.  I also am going to try to use the bread maker that Jeff got for me a couple of Christmases ago, and see if that's any better.

Because, (imagine a Scarlett O'Hara accent here) I'll never buy bread from the grocery store again!