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Why Don’t You Make Bread?

Without fail, when we sit down to eat a meal, one of us will say “Remember when we ate store bought bread?” or “Don’t you hope we never have to eat store bought bread again?” and it makes me wonder why everyone doesn’t make bread.  I know there are many reasons . . you can buy good quality bread.  We had a Great Harvest Bread in Owensboro and their bread was as good as my own home baked bread, probably better if I wanted to be really honest.  They ground their wheat daily and used quality ingredients but it was expensive.  I think homemade bread costs less.  Maybe you have no desire to bake bread.  I can see that.  There are some things I’d rather not do myself . . like change the oil in the car.  Vince could do that but we always have it done by our mechanic or the dealership if we are in Joplin at the time the oil needs changing.  Maybe you don’t eat bread.  That would be a real good reason not to bake bread.  But, the reason I want us to talk about is . . you don’t have time! You do!  When I made bread this week, I timed it.  Ready?  I’m not going to count grinding the wheat because you’re probably not going to be doing that . . at least not at first.  But it took me 14 minutes to grind the wheat. I use the Family Grain Mill and I grind it coarsely at first, then grind it finely on a second grind.  I don’t have to do that but I kinda like to!  I love putting the wheat berries in and getting flour out.  I have to watch myself or I’d grind a lot more wheat than I need . . it’s really intriguing!

10 minutes – dump the ingredients in the mixer, mix and let the mixer knead for 8 minutes.
2 minutes – shape into loaves, oil pan and put dough into pans.  This could probably be done in 1 minute but my recipe makes 2 loaves and I weigh them so they’re both exactly the same weight (22 ounces) and it takes some borrowing from one ball to the next to get them exactly equal.  What would happen if they weren’t exactly equal?  For some . . nothing; for me . . I’d pull my hair out!
30 minutes to rise – that’s what the recipe says but most kitchens are warmer than mine so I usually let it rise 45 minutes.
45 – 50 minutes to bake and . . that’s it!

Other than the mixing, kneading (in the mixer) and shaping, the rest of the time I’m off doing something else so it actually takes 12 minutes of my time to make two loaves of bread.  Granted, I have to be home and paying attention to the timer during the remaining 1 to 1-1/2 hour but . . can you spare 12 minutes once a week?  Then you can have 2 loaves of homemade bread!  Sounds pretty simple, huh?

I made Norm’s Onion Rolls over the weekend too.  Those things are so good!  And here’s a secret!  Keep out some of the dough  .. put it in the fridge til you need it.  Cut off some chunks, roll it out, put it in a heated skillet with a bit of melted butter and make it kinda like fry bread.  This dough makes really good fry bread!

Speaking of wholesome goodness, look at those eggs up there with the loaves of bread!  They’re from a quilting friend who has chickens.  I buy them from her.

Above are my eggs cooking.

Here’s Vince’s eggs cooking.  Now . . why would our eggs be cooking in separate pans?  Any ideas?  Vince was raised in the north; I was raised in the south.  These relationships from such diverse backgrounds are so difficult! 🙂   Vince will not have his eggs fried in bacon grease.  I will have mine only fried in bacon grease.  So, Vince’s eggs are fried in butter; my eggs are fried in the bacon grease.

Do not give me a speech about my non-healthy eating!  I eat fried eggs once a week! And, really . . what’s the difference in bacon grease vs. butter?  Don’t tell me . . it don’t matter.

And, there was a pot of grits to go along with those fried eggs and bacon.  I’m glad to be a southern girl!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I made your Herb Bread on Sunday evening and was surprised how quickly it all went together. I bought my Kitchen Aid Mixer last fall and just love it. The bread was wonderful, especially with pasta. Also made the cake with the cherries and coconut (forgort the name) and oh my, that was heaven! Thanks for the great recipes. Debbie

  2. Judy, funny you brought this up. A couple of days ago, I wasn’t feeling well and had run out of bread and didn’t feel like making any. Jim picked up some Ciabatta rolls from the bakery for us to make sandwiches that day for lunch. We both took a a bite and said, “Blech”! Store/restaurant bread tastes just like cardboard to us.

    We fry our eggs in bacon too. Only I fry my bacon on a griddle out on the grill so I don’t have to clean up all that grease inside 🙂

  5. Judy–

    Would you mind sharing your recipe for wheat bread, I have a friend that was trying to make and having a hard time of it. I would love to share your recipe with her!

    Thanks!
    Rachel

  6. oh my goodness what hearty belly laugh reading this gave me…..only weekend just passed a group of us were discussing this very issue…and it ended up being a time factor:p…I must print your recipe and share it around…thanks for sharing Judy-yep we regularly cook foods in separate pans to satisfy each ones preferences
    cheers Vickie

  8. ohhhh….your breakfast looks wonderful and GRITS!!! I love grits!

    Yummy~

  9. Currently I don’t make bread because instead of living in this house we are just staying here……… Big difference. Must be ready at the drop of a hat to have it all ready to SHOW………. Sure do wish someone would BUY.

    Anyhow, making bread is in my near future. Right now I am just sewing and working.

  10. Guess everyone wants your wheat bread recipe! I always fry up my eggs in bacon grease. I was raised in the South and I fry darned near EVERYTHING in bacon grease. To counteract the bad stuff supposedly building up in my arteries, I drink red wine and eat dark chocolate. Works for me!! 🙂

  11. Hubby likes to use the bread machine to make bread but doesn’t do it often. He buys the wheat flour, though, and doesn’t do any grinding. As for eggs, I’ll eat them friend either way…with bacon grease or butter. Your eggs look yummy and made me hungry!!! I’d love to be able to find farm-fresh eggs around here.

  12. I too make a lot of bread. We don’t eat a lot of it with just two of us. Two loaves usually lasts more than a week. I find that I cut the slices larger. I need to work on that. My recipe takes a little longer from start to finish. My first rise is in a oiled bowl for an hour then shape into loaves and rise again. I would also love to have your recipe. It would take a lot of time out of the process. Although I do make my bread after I get home from work.

  13. A couple of years ago I saw your post about wondering why your mom doesn’t make her own bread so she’s not caught unprepared after a storm. I had always wanted to bake my own bread but the one time I tried it was a little hard brick. After your post I was inspired to try it again. I love it– it is so fun! I’ve been making our bread for two years and it is still a thrill of pride to see each new loaf. Thanks for the inspiration. My husband is intrigued by the wheat grinder… maybe we’ll try that sometime too!

  14. I love homemade bread. Actually, I love most anything better when it is homemade. :~) Bacon grease or butter will do for me!

    Can you share the recipe for the onion rolls, please?

  15. I made bread yesterday and just polished off 2 pieces of toast slathered in butter. 😉
    Eggs should be fried in bacon grease, butter is for toast. I’m not hungry, I’m not hunrgy……..Hmmmmmm, I have bacon in the fridge, I have eggs, I think we’ll have breakfast for dinner!

  16. why don’t i make bread? i don’t have a good warm place to raise it now.

  17. OK, I have to ask – Do you ever just sit and veg out?? I am in awe of your energy! When I quilt/sew all day I don’t cook that day – it’s Bob’s turn. If I could weasel out of cooking all together I probably would – I love to try new recipes if someone else would go to the store and get the ingredients. As far as the eggs – I’m with you, bacon grease – Bob’s the breakfast cook in this house – he loves to make a big breakfast on the weekends – no grits though.

  18. I would love to start making bread. Is the Old-Fashioned White bread in your recipe section the one you use? or is there another one? I would love a good, quick bread recipe…

  19. I don’t make bread because if I did, I would slather it with butter and eat it as soon as it came out of the oven. Then, there still wouldn’t be any bread for sandwiches or toast, and I wouldn’t fit into my clothes. I’ve heard about portion control, but have not mastered the concept.

  20. I have tried making bread and I can’t get it to rise. I know about having the right temperature for the yeast ( I even used a thermometer!) but it still won’t rise. Maybe I didn’t knead it long enough or something. I might try it again using my Kitchen-Aid mixer. You have so much enery Judy from your homemade scratch cooking to your quilting. Wish I did!

    Sandy

  21. I make six loaves at a time and freeze them. Sometimes it’s hard to get motivated, even though it takes only minutes. One bite of wonder bread will usually do the trick.

  22. We know why we don’t make bread. And it isn’t for any of the reasons you mentioned. All of which are wonderful and delicious! We had the wheat, the grinder,the bulk yeast, the Bosch mixer, even the Zorishi bread maker machine. Come to think of it the bread machine is still sitting on the pantry floor with a layer of dust or is it bottles of water sitting on it….I must check that out. Anyway, we loved our bread! But, we ate so much of it every day and every chance we got with every meal and the pounds just started adding up. We tried to control that with more exercise and less bread. But as we got older it became more and more difficult to loose the bread and butter-pounds. That’s what we called them! So, now we rarely make bread, Rarely eat much bread come to think of it. Gosh, we miss it still. The smell is divine of baking bread. We do have it on special occasions, and we do eat sandwichs at times…but real home baked bread. Very rarely anymore. Your bread pictures are beautiful…and made me very tempted to make bread!

  23. I’m interested in your wheat bread recipe too. I have a bosch universal mixer that I bought because of your recommendation some time back. I love it for mixing bread dough! Such a difference using this mixer than my Kitchen Aid mixer. It’s so nice to be able to mix bread dough and not have flour flying all over the place. It’s also great for everything I used to use the Kitchen Aid for.

  24. Sometimes, I do make bread and it’s quite delicious. But I can never slice it to make a decent sandwich! Any suggestions?

    Off to fry some eggs (wishing I had bacon)

  25. I find the “Vince was raised in the North….” comments funny!! I live in the north, and if you are frying bacon, you had better putting the eggs in that grease!! The eggs just taste better if your having bacon and eggs!! So, I am thinking he was raised a little south of my north then??!! lol!!! (and if you are going to salt and pepper the eggs – that has to be done while they are cooking too!!! Taste way better then doing it ater they are on your plate!!!) Funny the little things that just ‘have to be that way!!’ isn’t it!! lol!!
    12 minutes to make bread, ‘eh????? I will see if I can fit it in……. 😉

  26. I’m from the south also and bacon grease is a staple in my home. Even if I’m just frying bacon for something, I have a crock in my ice box-another southern thing- and keep all the bacon grease in it. Then, I can put some in green beans, boiled or fryed cabbage(with onions), cook eggs anytime without cooking bacon,melt in pan for biscuits” wiping”, use some in the grease for chicken frying or chicken fried steak, wilted lettuce–I guess thats enough info for now to get some of you girls SAVE YOUR BACON GREASE!! Hugs, Bobbie

  27. LOL!!! I love to fry my eggs in bacon grease, but I know old friends who couldn’t stand it! It is truly a southern/northern thing. Just like frying anything! I met some folks from NY recently. I thought they would die when we started talking about fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, and (my personal favorite) fried okra. The lady made a comment about us frying everything. I laughed and asked her if she’d ever watched Paula Deen on the Food Network. “Now that’s a true Southern cook if I’ve ever seen one!” I told her.

  28. I must be a southern girl at heart! While visiting in Charleston for a wedding, I had my first sampling of grits….EEEEYYYYUUUUMMMM is all I could think of! Of course they were very upscale grits with shrimp and cheese, and the hostess was not inclinded to share the recipe,,,,but they were yummy. ANd I like my eggs fried in bacon fat and hubby grumps about it very loudly, so I WIPE out the skillet and add butter…forgoing this loveliness for marrital happiness. Sorry to hear you won’t be getting your chickens…you would have liked them. We have the variety that lays those greenish eggs….after 30 years of having chickens off and on, you’d a thunk we would have experienced that before…but no…we stuck to the plain jane varieties. I don’t think people up here in northern maine have ever seen them; I didn’t until we raised ‘fancy’ chickens. and these girls are HARRRDY! We still have snow and below freezing temps and they are producing….our other chickens never rose to the occation! Enough rambling.

  29. Whoa girl! We talk Southern here!! Do you use a Bosch for mixing? We used to make our own bread but when my dd moved to the windy city, that all went by the wayside. BUT I am encouraged to start again. A friend found a Whisper Mill for me, so we will be grinding our own wheat again (which sits in the laundry room in big containers), and hopefully get back into the bread making habit. It is so good, and it is so hard not to eat they whole thing when it comes out of the oven. I did find a Zoji bread machine at the thrift store, and it makes very decent bread, but I have to use the store bought bread flour.

    Ya’ll have a great day!

    Jocelyn

  30. I started making bread over 20 years ago. I used to make four loaves at a time, and they lasted my family for a week. Now, of course I had daughters instead of sons, but a couple more loaves would have done the trick if it had been otherwise. Now I just make one loaf at a time, since we’re empty nesters, but I now use a bread machine. It takes me all of five minutes to measure and dump everything into the machine, and then I can go away and leave it for however long I like. Yum!

    BTW, I much prefer butter to bacon grease — DH is the opposite. LOL!

  31. We’re a North/South couple too! But I eat the eggs however he wants to cook them! Although now that you mention it – he cleans the skillet after the bacon and uses butter . . . I just spent my lunch hour re-reading through the Artesian Bread in 5 Minutes book – my first basic batch of dough is in the fridge. I’m going to try my first loaf tonight!

  34. Hi Ruth Anne. Sorry, I sold the wheat grinder and the mixer a while back. All I have left is my bread machine—I think . Haven’t seen it in years either. . We are in our late 60’s and we just don’t eat like this anymore. Judy’s pictures are making me hungry, and I’m enjoying all the notes about southern cooking and bread. :o).

  35. I’m from the way up North……..and we fry our eggs in the bacon grease………….and use lard for pie crust…………nothing beats good old milk gravy made with bacon fat!!!!

    Karen L

  36. I am from the north and much prefer my eggs to be fried in bacon grease. That only happens here when Bill and I are having breakfast for dinner on the weekend. When we have that my parents, who we take care of, eat leftovers. My dad would have a fit, well not really, but he wouldn’t like it if I fried eggs in the bacon grease. He really would like to eliminate all forms of grease except olive oil. That includes any fat he sees on meat. He would cut it off before the meat is cooked, so the meat was tough and tasteless.

    We used to make bread every week. I used to mix it from scratch by hand, then graduated to the mixer method and then mixed in the bread machine…..never baked it in the bread machine. I would buy the wheat flour from the Amish.

    Now I rarely make homemade bread, because we don’t eat enough bread to make it worth the effort. I do make dinner rolls and sweet rolls once in a while.

    I do buy any bread available at Ma’s Bakery in the little town of Bloomington, WI when we are there. I love her bread, but I make better pecan and sweet rolls.

    Do you have a tested recipe for rye bread. Every recipe I have tried the bread is too heavy.

    I have eaten eggs almost every day of my life. My DR. whats to know what I eat, because I am overweight, due to PCOS, but my blood work is wonderful. I told her eggs, bacon, sausage, etc….and lots of vegetables and fruits we raised our self. The only time she was concerned about my weight was when I gained 7 lbs in 3 months. She found out I had a slight thyroid problem. That is now controlled by meds.

  37. Yummy!!! I can smell it all the way over here! There is nothing like the smell and taste of fresh bread. 🙂
    dawn

  38. Oh Judy!
    Please post for us your wheat bread AND the white bread recipes. 12 minutes prep time sounds WONDERFUL! Just the other day I tried for the first time to make cinamon raison buns using the mixer for my knead time. Boy that was nifty! I would LOVE to try making bread now that I know about using the kneading hooks and rising the bread inside the oven! I have tried many times over the past 10 years but could never succesfully get a nice tender bread, they were always rocks! “Im getting closer”

    I LOVE bacon fried eggs. Grama made it that way and its a “comfort food” reminding me of when I lived with her. Hubby prefers his eggs fried in olive oil. I will eat it either way, its good when my hubby cooks I get a break! We call the bacon greased fried eggs, “Heart attack fried eggs”

    Much Hugs
    Robin in Idaho

  39. Judy, I follow your blog daily and am inspired by all you do. I do not have the Bosch machine but you put the idea in my head a few months back. Keep up the good work. Sandra

  40. We can buy fresh bread at Panera so I don’t bother any more – what’s even better is that I usually walk over to get it so I get some exercise before eating it. I like cooking and make most meals pretty much from scratch but I usually just cook 3-4 nights a week. The other nights we eat leftovers or go out.

  41. Judy, I was born and raised in MI and it was always bacon grease for frying eggs. Mom (and grandmas) had a “grease” can for the bacon grease in the fridge. Now I very seldom have eggs and bacon but when I do it is a REAL treat. Nothing quite like it.

    I’d love to try your wheat bread recipe. Haven’t made bread in years. I buy a loaf from the bakery, put it in the freezer and it lasts for a long time. I’m not a big bread eater but I do love homemade wheat bread.

  42. There is nothing worse than an egg cooked in anything else than bacon. There just isn’t any reason to eat that egg either.

    ‘Cept I’m originally a northerner. Wonder who taught someone in my family to fry in bacon grease….love her lil pea-pickin’ heart!

  43. I do make bread and love to do it..however I cannot come close to competeing with that 12 minute thing. I dotn have a mixer that will knead it and my recipie calls for a second rising so it really does take a while. Which reminds me,,,,i took the last loaf out of the freezer yesterday so i need to plan for the next batch.

  44. I CAN bake bread – used to do it frequently, even hamburger buns at one time, but my dear, when I bake bread, I EAT it ALL, with a lot of butter!!! I admit, I am weak, no inner self-control, and my love handles can attest to both my weakness and my honesty. 8-(((

    Amazingly, my DH also does NOT eat much bread at all. Homemade bread will sit uneated it it’s for him — he won’t eat it, sooooo, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!

  45. LOVE homemade Bread..but since it is just me, it is sad when a loaf of bread only lasts a day…which is why I don’t buy it or candy or chips or ice cream or any of the other stuff I have no self control over!!!!!! LOL

    Dorothy

  46. I make bread in my bread machine sometimes, I don’t have a lot of counter space. I’ve tried making bread other ways but it always turns out like something we’d use for a door stop rather than something we’d eat. I love home made bread though. When my Dad was alive he used to make bread all the time, I lived about 5 hours away and he would get up really early and make bread and put 2 loaves in a box and send them bus parcel express to me and I’d pick them up on my way home from work the same day. I miss those days.

  47. When bread machines came out I thought I’d never use one but we got one 16?years ago and have bought about 3 loves of bread since. I made bread before that but with the bread machine my kids make the bread. When I had 4 at home they ate 2 loaves a day! My 12 year old made a loaf every night before he went to bed and another before he went to school. We grind our own wheat too. Now my youngest (11 years old) makes about 2 loaf a week since I’m to lazy to make lunches and they eat school ones. He keeps track of how many loaves he makes (I recently gave him a pay raise) and I pay him .75cents @ loaf. My 2 boys at home refuse to eat store bought and when they go on a scout activity they bring the bread.

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